Edit and rename labels in Jira Cloud
Platform Notice: Cloud - This article applies to Atlassian products on the cloud platform.
Summary
If you're looking to edit or rename labels in Jira issues, here's a little heads-up: while you can't directly edit labels, you can remove an existing one and add a new one instead.
This article will guide you through the steps to bulk update labels in your Jira issues.
Bulk update labels on existing tickets
Let's say you have label-old that you want to replace with label-new. There are 2 parts to resolve this:
Part 1: Add the new label to the existing issues
- Do a Jira issue search using the Labels field as a filter and add it as one of the columns or, use the JQL.
From the top navigation, click on Filters > View all issues.
If you're in the Basic search mode, select JQL.
Enter your JQL query: labels = label-old.
- The search page will return those Jira issues that contain the label-old label.
- At the top right corner of the search results page, click on the (...) followed by Bulk Change all <n> issues.
- For more information, please check Search for and select the list of issues.
- This will open the Bulk Operation page. Follow the below instructions or refer to Edit multiple issues.
- Choose issues > Use the checkboxes to select all or some of the issues > Next.
- Choose bulk action > Select Edit Issues > Next.
- Operation Details > Select Change Labels and set its value to Add to existing.
- To choose label-new either use the drop-down or type it.
- Scroll down to the end of the page and click Next.
- Confirmation > Review the details on the screen and click Confirm > Acknowledge.
Part 2: Remove the old label
- Now that you have added the label you wanted, it is time to remove the one we don't want: label-old.
- Do another search to find issues with label-old (same step in step 1 of part 1).
- At the top right corner of the search results page, click on the (...) followed by Bulk Change all <n> issues.
- For more information, please check Search for and select the list of issues.
- This will open the Bulk Operation page. Follow the below instructions or refer to Edit multiple issues.
- Choose issues > Use the checkboxes to select all or some of the issues > Next.
- Choose bulk action > Select Edit Issues > Next.
- Operation Details > Select Change Labels and set its value to Find and remove these.
- To choose label-old either use the drop-down or type it.
- Scroll down to the end of the page and click Next.
- Confirmation > Review the details on the screen and click Confirm > Acknowledge.
You should now have updated the issues with the new label.