On June 6, 2016, Microsoft announced that the Planner is released from the clutches of Preview to Commercial availability.

Who are eligible for Planner roll out?
Microsoft has informed that, over the next several weeks, Planner will roll out to all eligible Office 365 customers worldwide. This includes Office 365 Enterprise E1–E5, Business Essentials, Premium and Education subscription plans.

NOTE:
Also Microsoft has informed that all users with eligible subscription plans will automatically see the Planner tile appear in the Office 365 app launcher when it is available for them to use. No specific action by Office 365 admins is needed.

But many organizations do not want Planner to be enabled for all Office 365 users. So in this blog we deal with removing Planner license for Office 365 users. It will be a tedious process for Admin to bulk remove Planner license for Office 365 users from Office 365 admin console. But, you can use Office 365 License Management tool from TechNet to simplify this process. https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Office365-License-cfd9489c

  a. Selecting All Licensed Office 365 Users

b. Selecting Specific Licensed Office 365 Users

c. Selecting Bulk Licensed Office 365 Users from CSV file

    First select your CSV file using the numerical points as shown in below screenshot.

    After selecting the CSV file, the users in the file will be automatically selected in the report.

Sample CSV file

After selecting your required licensed users, navigate to Actions menu and select Manage License option.

As a result, a window pops up for confirmation, in which click OK.

Then in the Manage License window, remove the Planner license from your required Office 365 subscriptions plans.

Result:

After removing Planner license from Office 365 subscriptions plans, action result will be displayed as shown below.

Now I check for a user – Bob Darrow in All Licensed Users report and found that Planner license is removed.

Finally, I check in Office 365 Admin console and confirm that the Planner license is removed for the user.