Archiving a project

By archiving a project, you can remove it from Jira and preserve the data it contains in case you need it later. It’s good practice to archive inactive or completed projects so they don’t clutter your Jira instance. Fewer projects may also mean better performance.

Project archiving is only available for Jira Software Data Center and Jira Service Management Data Center. To archive projects in Jira Data Center, see this knowledge base article.

Before you begin

  • You must have the Jira Administrator or Jira System Administrator global permission to archive or restore projects.  For more information about different types of permissions that can be set up in Jira, see Permissions overview

  • You don't have to prepare a project in any way before archiving it. You can archive any project, and restore it later, if needed.

Archiving a project

To archive a project:

  1. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select Administration  > Projects.

  2. Find the project that you want to archive and select Actions () > Archive

    List of projects, focus on Archive option.

    The project will be immediately hidden from view and moved to the Archived projects page.

Jira will be reindexed automatically to remove the project data from the index and keep the performance healthy.

What happens to a project after you archive it?

Here's a few things you should know about:

Project
  • The project will be restricted, and can't be viewed by anyone.
  • The project will no longer appear in project pickers, list of projects, search results, or JQL auto-complete. It won't be visible anywhere besides the Archived projects page.
  • Links to the project will still work.
Issues
  • Similarly to the project itself, issues will no longer appear in search results.
  • Issues will become read-only. You won't be able to modify them, but you can still view them either through direct links or mentions in other projects or applications.
Customer portal





Only applicable if Jira Service Management is installed and licensed.





  • The customer portal will be restricted, and can't be viewed by anyone.
  • The customer portal will no longer appear in the help center navigation. If you access a customer portal link, you will receive a message advising you that the service project does not exist.
Configuration
  • Archiving a project won't affect the configuration it uses (schemes, screens, workflows, custom fields etc.) The configuration remains active and is still shared with other projects. If you change it, the changes will also apply to an archived project once it's restored.
Index
  • Project data will be ignored in the index, and removed completely once you re-index Jira. This improves performance by removing data that is stored directly in Jira.

Restoring and re-indexing a project

All the project data remains in the database, so you can restore it whenever it's needed again.

To restore a project:

  1. In the upper-right corner of the screen, select Administration  > Projects.
  2. Select Archived projects. This page shows all projects that have been archived.List of archived projects.
  3. Find the project you want to restore, and select Actions () > Restore.
    The project will be restored to its original state, and brought back to the list of projects and project pickers. 
  4. Re-index the project, so its issues appear again in search results.
    1. Open the project you just restored.
    2. In the bottom-right corner of the screen, select Project settings ().
    3. Under the Project settings (the left-side panel), select Re-index project.
    4. Select Start project re-index.
Last modified on Nov 3, 2023

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