Accidentally Deleted a Jira Work Item? Here’s How I Found & Restored Two Critical Bugs

[#1]

Use case - Problem

Two Highest priority Bugs in project PAY suddenly disappeared from our sprint:

• 3DS fails for VISA on first attempt
  
  
• Legacy bug
  
  

No cards on the board, links returning 404, team in panic. Jira doesn’t have a native recycle bin for work items, so “Delete” really means gone.

Solution

Use the Who Deleted My Issues? app to:

• Search deleted work items (by project, work type, user, or date range),
  
  
• See who deleted them and when,
  
  
• Restore a single work item or bulk restore multiple ones, even into a different project,
  
  
• Or export all deleted work items to CSV for an audit trail.
  
  

Spoiler: the “Deleted by” column revealed the culprit… OMG IT WAS ME! 🤦

TL;DR

• Two critical Bugs vanished from PAY.
  
  
• Open Who Deleted My Issues? → Deleted Work Items, filter by Project = PAY and Work type = Bug.
  
  
• Confirm who deleted them (hi, me 🙋), then Restore individually or via Bulk options → Restore.
  
  
• You can even restore them into another project or export the deleted list to CSV.
   

Step-by-step: How I used the app to find and restore the missing Bugs

1. Open the app
   Apps → Who Deleted My Issues? → Deleted Work Items.
   
   
2. Filter to exactly what went missing
   
   
   • Project: PAY
     
     
   • Work type: Bug
     
     
   • (Optional) Date range around when the work items disappeared
     
     
3. Identify the “who”
   In the results list, check Deleted by and Deletion date.
   In our case: Deleted by: Celina. Yup. Me. OMG 😅 
4. Preview before restore (optional)
   Use the eye/preview action to review summary, key fields, and references (epic, sprint, links) so you know what will be restored.
   
   
5. Restore
   
   
   • Single: Click Restore on the row.
     
     
   • Bulk: Select multiple → Bulk options → Restore.
     
     
   • You can even restore them into another project if the original one is no longer relevant.
     
     
6. Verify after restore
   
   
   • Work item reappears with summary, description, comments, attachments, links, and custom fields.
     
     

What you can do with Who Deleted My Issues?

• Search deleted work items
  Filter by Project, Work type, User, Date range.
  
  
• See the full story
  Who deleted it, when it happened, and quick access to details before restoring.
  
  
• Restore safely
  One-click Restore per work item or Bulk restore many at once.
  Choose whether to restore them to the original project or into a different one.
  
  
• Export for audit
  Use Bulk options → Export to CSV for compliance, post-mortems, or change reviews.
  
  
• Clean up deliberately
  If something was deleted on purpose, you can Delete permanently from the app to keep the audit list tidy.

Jira won’t save you from accidental deletes, but Who Deleted My Issues? will.
In minutes, we found the missing Bugs in PAY, confirmed who did it, and restored them, attachments, comments, links and all, without rolling back the whole site.