How can I view (not restore) one issue from the backup?

[David Thielen]

Hi all;

How can I go to the backup to see the backup contents from one specific issue? I need to recover some text from the description that was deleted recently.

thanks - dave

[Jack Brickey]

The only way I know of would be to restore the backup to another instance and the copy the text or import the issue into the current instance. 

[Joe Pitt]

The backup is a either an xml file or a zip compressed xml file. As @Jack Brickey said you need to restore it to view anything. 

Do not delete issues. When you delete it is GONE. Hardly a week goes by without someone wanting to restore an issue. Deleting issues will come back and bite you when it is the most inconvenient. I suggest closing with a resolution value of Deleted anything you want to delete. I implement a special transition only the project lead can execute and it requires filling in a reason field from a select list (such as entered in error, OBE, Duplicate, Other) and explanation text.

Deleting issues destroys historical data. Missing issue numbers will eventually cause a question about what it was and why was it deleted even if it was done properly. Missing data always brings in the question of people hiding something that may have looked bad.

The only viable way to restore an issue is to create a new instance of JIRA and restore a backup that has the issues. Then export them to a csv file and import them to your production instance. You will lose the history.

[David Thielen]

We did not delete an issue, we deleted some useful information from the description in an issue.

Is there a way to download that xml file and then in the xml file find the issue and read the description contents? If so, where/how can I download that xml file?

thanks - dave

[Joe Pitt]

The JIRA administrator will know where the backups are kept. The default is a zip file. I've never looked at how parts of an issue are stored. I'd search on the issue key to start with or if there is an unusual word string. 

[David Thielen]

I have a bad feeling we may not be backing up our JIRA. I had assumed Atlassian did this automatically.

I'm reading the backup instructions and it says we should be performing a backup on the database. How can we do that when the database is on the Atlassian server? (Our JIRA site is https://windwardstudios.atlassian.net)

??? - thanks - dave

[Jack Brickey]

@David Thielen , this is a different question. Regardless, go to Jira settings > System and backup/restore. You need to be a Jira Admin