Duplicate Custom Fields

[Rajesh Ramankutty]

Hi Guys need your Assistance to remove the Duplicate custom fields in JIRA Production environment. 

Guys my seniours have created many duplicate custom fields in our production instance and it is been associated with the many live projects we cant able to delete those customfields and if we delete means datas will be lost in these custom fields so need your assistance to solve these issue.

[John Funk]

When you say duplicate fields do you mean there are two different fields with the same name? Or do you mean you have two fields that are capturing the same data?

[Rajesh Ramankutty]

@John Funk it means same name for many custom fields

[John Funk]

You can modify the name by doing an Edit on the custom field. Simply change the name to something different than the current one. For example if you have two fields that say Start Date and you need them to have different meanings, then change one of them from Start Date to Project Start Date or Session Start Date - or whatever is more descriptive.

If you have values in that field that should apply to the real Start Date and not the new Project Start Date for example, you will need to use the bulk change function to copy them over. However, you will have to do that for each different date that you have. 

The other option is to put the new values in a spreadsheet (be sure to include the Key in the Spreadsheet) and them upload them to do a mass update to the issues. 

[Deleted user]

If the total issues count is less in number, you can do it manually in below 2 steps...

          1) copy/Move the duplicated field's value in Main field (s)

             2) Remove the duplicated custom fields.

If the total issues count is more in count, you can try follow the Workaround  

1) Export all issues in CSV format (All fields), take a copy of this file for a Backup.

2) Open the CSV file in Excel & find the duplicated Custom fields

1. add an empty row in row2 and apply formula =COUNTIF(1:1,A1) in all cells in the row, so if the count is > 1, then that field does not have duplicates.               
2. Check the Main Custom fields ( pick 1 custom field which has maximum values) and copy data from remaining duplicated custom fields.               
3. Save this file in CSV, reopen the file
4. Remove the row2 as it has formula values alone. remove the columns which are not necessary for import.    

4) in JIRA , custom fields section, Rename the duplicated fields as field1. field2 like that.

5) do a CSV import by keeping the necessary fields including issue key and main custom field(s). so that duplicated field's value will get updated in one field.

6) Remove the duplicated custom fields in JIRA from all screens, after few days, once you are confident that there is no data loss, remove the Duplicated custom fields from JIRA

[Rajesh Ramankutty]

Thank you will work it and come back sir

[Yogesh Mude]

HI @Rajesh Ramankutty 

First clone your Jira prod to test/stage and then use the optimizer for Jira app to clean your jira instance.

Try to perform the custom filed modification activity on test/stage instance and do the thero testing. Once everything works fine then apply the same changes to jira prod.