How to restore accidentally deleted issue in JIRA applications from the XML backup file
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
Purpose
How to restore Issue/s within your JIRA Application that have accidentally been deleted.
Archiving issues
From Jira 8.1, you can also archive issues which can be more convenient instead of deleting them. Archived issues can be restored again to the originating project. Note: Archiving issues functionality is available on Jira Data Center only.
Resolution
To restore an issue you could try the following steps
JIRA 7.2.x+
- Setup new clean JIRA instance, separate from your production environment as per Establishing staging server environments for JIRA applications.
- Restore XML backup from before the issue was deleted. Automated backups can be found at
<jira-home>/export. - Export the issue to CSV, as outlined here: Working with search results - Exporting your search results.
- Import the CSV data containing your lost issue, following our documentation here: Importing data from CSV.
JIRA 7.1.x and earlier
- Setup new clean JIRA instance, separate from your production environment as per Establishing staging server environments for JIRA applications.
- Restore XML backup from before the issue was deleted. Automated backups can be found at
<jira-home>/export. - Export the issue, as outlined here: Exporting Search Results to Excel
- Convert the exported Excel to CSV
- Import the CSV data containing your lost issue, following our documentation here: Importing data from CSV.
If you want to change the created and updated date for the imported issues, it would have to be done at the database level. The comments are stored in the table 'jiraaction'. Issues are stored in the table 'jiraissue', referencing the values in the column issueid.
Please note that making changes at the database level is not covered by Atlassian Support Offerings.