Deleted Epic, where do the user stories go?

[Breanna Newman]

I deleted an Epic on accident, everything I am reading says that the stories under that Epic do not get delted. Where do these stories end up, in the teams backlog? And is there an easy way to identify which stories were in this Epic?

[Avinash Kumar]

I understand your question @Breanna Newman . Even I am facing the same situation in my current project. One person deleted one Epic by mistake and there were 30 User Stories under that Epic. 

Now my PO is coming back to me requesting to get the list of all 30 stories under that deleted epic so that she can create a new epic and tag all the 30 stories under the new epic.

Unfortunately, our BL is very big and there are so many stories already there without any Epic. So, finding those 30 stories (Without any Epic now) is very difficult. Also, when the epic is deleted then, "Updated" filed is not updated in Jira so we cann't use the JQL as such :

Parent = Empty AND Updated >= "2024/04/22"

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Breanna Newman 

Welcome to the community.

If you delete an issue all relations are also gone.

The issues will be in the same project if the issues that where in the Epic belonged to the same project. Otherwise they exist in the project they belong to.

Depending on their status they end up in the backlog, active sprint (if they where in an active sprint) or on a Kanban board. It al depends on the status of the issues that where in the Epic

Unfortunate there is no more reference on these issues as well.

[Breanna Newman]

Thanks for the response. I guess I am a little confused now, these are very conflicting answers. 

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Breanna Newman 

I will simplify.

If you delete an Epic, all relations to the Epic issue are gone.

an Epic can contain issues from multiple projects (depended on your setup).

If your Epic only had issues in the same project, the issues can be in multiple places.

• Backlog, if issues where not in a live sprint
• Scrum board, if issues where in a live sprint
• Backlog in related to a kanban board
• Kanban board if not in initial workflows status (when using backlog option in a kanban board)
• Kanban board.

Hope this clarifies it for you.

[Breanna Newman]

Yes, thank you. We were able to find all of the stories in the issues tab. Whew!

[Valerie Knapp]

Hi @Breanna Newman , yes, I think @Marc - Devoteam was trying to explain that when you delete the Epic, you don't delete the other issues, just their relationship to the original Epic. Unless you bulk deleted everything, the underlying tasks and so on should still be around, they just might not be visible in the board, depending on the configuration.

Cheers

[Valerie Knapp]

Hi @Breanna Newman , welcome to the community and thanks for your question.

You should be able to see a list of all of the issues in the project from this button here, 'Issues'

This should open a new screen with a list of filters on the left, to check for all of the issues, click on the filter, 'All Issues'

If you are in a self-hosted environment, this looks a little different but you should have the same options

I hope this helps but if not, let us know and either I or someone else will try to help.

Cheers

[Breanna Newman]

Thanks for the response. I guess I am a little confused now, your answer and Marc's answer tell two different things.