Archiving an issue

By archiving an issue, you can hide it in Jira, but preserve the data it contains in case you need it later. It’s good practice to archive done or resolved issues, or those whose resolution due date has passed, so that they don’t clutter your Jira instance. For example, many customers archive issues that haven't been updated for the last 2 years.

You can archive one or multiple issues. Note that archiving large numbers of issues may take a while. No reindexing is needed when you archive or restore issues. 

This feature is available for Data Center only.


Before you begin

  • By default, you must be a Jira Administrator or Jira System Administrator to archive or restore issues. However, an administrator might also give you the Archive Issues for a Project and the Restore Issues for a Project permissions to archive and restore issues in a specific project. By default, these permissions are not enabled.

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

Archiving an issue

To archive an issue:

  1. Go to Issues.

  2. Find the issue you want to archive, open it and select More > Archive

    The issue will be immediately hidden from view and moved to the archive. Each issue will be archived with all its subtasks.

Archiving multiple issues as part of bulk change

If you want to archive thousands of issues at once, instead of selecting the issues manually, you can make a bulk change. By default, this option allows you to archive all the issues on the current page or a maximum of 1000 issues. However, a system admin can raise this limit if needed.

You either need to be a Jira admin or a delegated admin to make a bulk change.

  1. Open Issues.

  2. Select the issues you wan to view.
  3. Open the drop-down and select the number of issues you want to perform the change on. You can perform the change on the current page or a maximum of 1000 issues. You might not have these options if you only have a few issues. Then you can only select to perform the operation on the issues you have. 

  4. Select the issues you want to archive and click Next.

    You can also right-click one or several issues on your board or backlog and select Bulk change.
  5. Select Archive issues
  6. Select whether to send a notification about the change to the users involved in the issues. 

The issues will be archived with all their subtasks. Note that issues might have multiple subtasks so archiving might take a while because of a great number of subtasks. 

Archived issues disappear from the dashboard and search. If you use Jira Software or Jira Service Desk, they might also disappear from other places. For more information, see What happens to my issues

Archiving via API

You can also use API to archive your issues. See https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/8.1.0/

You have no limit to the number of issues you can archive using REST API. 

What happens to an issue after you archive it?

Here's a few things you should know about:

Issues...
  • Issues will be read-only and accessible only with a direct link or mentions in other issues or applications. You won't be able to modify them but for audit purposes administrators can export them to a CSV file. To export archived issues with all their data, go to  > System > Import and Export > Export Archived Issues.
  • Issues will no longer appear in the list of issues in projects, search results, JQL auto-complete, the dashboard, or reports.
  • In Jira Software, archived issues will also disappear from the Scrum and Kanban boards and backlogs. 
  • If you also use Jira Service Desk, archived issues will also disappear from the customer portal, and agent queues.
Index...

Issue data will be ignored and removed from the index. This enhances Jira performance because Jira stores less data.


Restoring an issue

All the issue data remains in the database, so you can restore it whenever it's needed again. Currently, you can restore one issue at a time if you know its direct link. You can also find the link in the CSV file to which you can export your issues. 

If you want to restore multiple issues, do that using the REST API.

To restore an archived issue, open it with the direct link and click the Restore button. 


The issue will be restored to its original state, and brought back to Jira. While issues are being restored Jira is also reindexed so that no additional action is needed for the issues to be visible and searchable again. The issue will be restored with all its subtasks.

Having the direct link allows you to restore the issues that have been archived individually. If an issue has been archived together with the project it belonged to, you need to restore the project to restore the issue. For restoring projects, see Archiving a project.

Exporting archived issues

To export the list of archived issues, you must be a Jira System Administrator.

You can export archived issues to a CSV file for audit purposes. By default, the file contains all archived issues both archived individually and archived together with the project they belonged to, and sorted by the date of archiving. Each exported issue contains the following fields: system fields, archived by, archive date, and the URL, which is the direct link to the issue. 

You can also export your archived issues to CSV by going to  > System > Import & Export > Archived Issues.

tip/resting Created with Sketch.

Exporting issues can also be useful to quickly trace the issues that might have been archived by mistake, or to quickly get a direct link to restore specific issues.

Alternatively, you can use REST API. If you want to export issues using the REST API run the following command: 

/rest/internal/2/archiving?all=true


Archiving FAQ

Q: I want to restore subtasks but not an issue. Is this possible?

A: No. If you want to restore subtasks you also need to restore the issue these subtasks belong to. 

Q: I want to delete a project that has some archived issues in it. What happens to these issues?

A: The issues get deleted and are no longer stored as archived issues.

Q: Is the information about archived issues included in batch notifications?

A: Yes. We inform you about every issue archived and restored. 

Last modified on Jul 12, 2021

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