Export / Import Comments in JIRA

[Michael Wells]

Hi there,

This question has probably been asked many times, however is there a plugin available that will allow you to export all comments to CSV, AND allow you to import comments as well?

Thanks,
Michael.

[Tony_holtan_Bjune]

Jepp. Nfc appen kan du visst gjøre mye rart med har jeg hørt 🤔

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's not that simple.  

Every time this comes up, we end up with the question "what do you want to export" and never get a straight answer.  

Do you want all the comments as columns?  Rows?  Do you want the author and date/time as plain text in the cell the comment goes into?  Or cells on their own?  If you've got 10 comments, that's 30 fields on one issue, what's the structure of the export?

On the import side, this is a very unusual question because it's actually a lot easier!  Most of us would expect the import to be harder, but all you need to do is stick with "one line per issue", put all the comments to import in their own columns, and then tell JIRA that each comment column is the comments field.

[Michael Wells]

Thank you for your prompt response Nic. I would think that the way comments are exported are the way in which they are imported. One comment per line, and each field would represent the metadata of each comment (i.e. issue, comment #, submitter, time, date, etc). Is the importing native to JIRA (i.e. no plugins?) I'm sure you've gathered by now that I'm a JIRA rookie. :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

But that breaks the output of "one line per issue" which is what most people need on export. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying it's wrong in any sense. It's a perfectly valid format, very useful in some cases, and it's nice to actually get a good answer to "what do you want to export". But it's one format amongst a myriad of possibilities, and no, it's not been coded for.

[Michael Wells]

Bugger! That would be a nice feature! I was thinking the one line per comment export format, as I'm not looking to have the comments extracted with the issues, I'm looking for a simple way to export all comments and then import them to a new project. Oh well - I appreciate your time and your answers. Thank you!

[Michael Wells]

Not sure if there's any misunderstanding going on here, but the exported comments would not need any context. I would be looking to export issues (which, of course, you can already do), export the comments in each issue, then import the issues into a new project, and finally map the exported comments to the issues in the new project. :) It'll also mean that we can retain a backup of all the issues / comments within a project.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Um. You said "I'm not looking to have the comments extracted with the issues". What you've now described is totally the opposite of that. However, it is actually quite possible. Run an XML backup of everything, then use "import project" - you'll be able to import an exact copy of all the issues in a project, with their comments.

[Michael Wells]

Oh dear, I do apologise for that one! ... cool! I'll look into doing that. :) Thanks!

[Michael Wells]

Oh dear, I do apologise for that one! ... cool! I'll look into doing that. :) Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Heh, no problem. Looking back over things I've written in the past, I've managed to completely contradict myself in two sentences in a row many times. I know I'm not a good writer, and I'm not a great reader either - I prefer to say "I don't understand because I'm probably misreading it" nowadays, as opposed to my more youthful and inexperienced "I know everything so you must be wrong". Because I usually am missing the point!

[EC Jira Admin]

Problem here is I can't even just add ONE comment.  Also, I see the question being put forth but no answer as to how to do it.  What I mean is in my case is I'm using JIRA cloud.  I've got a CSV file with an issue and a single comment (one comment is all I want to import into Jira).  The CSV Importer does not show an available field for COMMENTS. If I go into screens/fields section I see that I cannot make any changes to this except for the style of the renderer(no hiding/unhiding of field available).  Not sure how to proceed in this case.  Any guidance appreciated. Thanks !!

[L B]

Do the comments need to be included in the initial import, or can they be done at a later time? I am asking as we are migrating projects over but the formatting of the comments takes such a long time. Due to time constraints, I am wondering if we can import the issues and then come back through and import comments. I realize it's double importing, but in the interest of getting the issues in and allow users to get to work, I'd rather not delay due to the comments. Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

If you're using the importer available to admins, then yes, you can - you need to change the import format so that it includes the issue key you want to comment on and map that into the issue column so that it knows this is an update to an existing issue

Alec, sorry, I didn't see that comment.  You need to be using the admin import under admin -> backup and restore, not project import, but I'm not sure that's available on Cloud.

[senthilkumarn]

Hey  Nic,

i need some help on importing tickets to JIRA project. i am able to import everything except Comments. 

can you help me on that

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The answer to that is above.