Cannot format date correctly when importing issues

[Steve Nienaber]

I am importing Issues from a SCV and cannot find a way for Jira to take my date format.  CSV doesn't seem to allow dd/MMM/yy, which seems to be the only way Jira will import date fields.  

[Tansu Akdeniz]

Hi @Steve Nienaber 

Welcome to the community!

There shouldn't be any problem if format in csv and import wizard matches.

Could you share a sample? Or try another format to import?

Also, please check this Dates are not properly imported from CSV file KB.

[Michelle Gronwold]

You can change the date format on the import screen to whatever you want it to be. Just be sure to keep the month as capital "M"'s. Click on the "SimpleDateFormat" for assistance on the format. How is the date formatted on your spreadsheet? We could possibley help you match the date format for import.

[Jacques]

Hey @Steve Nienaber ,

I usually use the following format for dates: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm ... this usually works.

Any other method seems to have issues where days and months might get turned around. Eg: 11/03/2023, could be 3rd November, 2023; or 11th March 2023.

Hope this helps,
--- Jacques.

[Steve Nienaber]

Thank you, so to clarify, if I change the format in Excel to this, it should import correctly?  

[Michelle Gronwold]

If you change your Excel date format to "2012-03-14", then you will also need to update the "jira import issues from CSV" date format to "yyyy-MM-dd". Whatever date format you are using in Excel, you will need to modify the Date Format field in jira to match.

[Steve Nienaber]

I changed the Jira date format to yyyy-mm-dd (not yyyy-MM-dd as Excel does not seem to give that option) and this is the result:

[Michelle Gronwold]

Jira needs the capital M's. Lowercase m's in Jira mean something else. 

Excel does not distinguish between lower or upper case in the format. Just jira.

[Pradheep Ayyanar]

Hi All

I am trying to import CSV to create sub-task with few date fields and all are imported successfully.

But the date fields are always wrong.

Input in CSV: 02/05/2024 [mm/dd/yyyy]

import csv format: mm/dd/yyyy

Jira sub-task fields show as Jan 05,2024

For all the dates imported, the date is correct and the month is always JAN. can someone help to fix.

Pradheep

[Kevin Kosub]

Pradheep-

I had the same issue over and over while trying different formats.    The only format that I could find that would work is :  MM/d/yyyy.   Make sure both .csv file and uploader data format are both set to this.   

Also I had to make sure the excel file is saved to the .csv UTF-8 format.

I tried dd/MMM/yy h:mm a,  MM/DD/YYYY, mm/dd/YYYY, MM/DD/YY, mm/dd/yyyy, mm/dd/yyyy and they were all not working by confusing the month and year even though I had both files and uploader settings synced.    For example  05/05/2025  would load as 12/05/2024.... EVEN thought the "Map Field Value" screen would show this mapping right be default each time before I did the actual upload.   

It was truly frustrating until I happened upon that format that seems to work for me for some reason.   It makes no sense from an end user perspective and seems buggy?   but who knows without being able to talk to an engineer/support person in real-time.   

I hope this helps.

-Kevin