Import issues and preserve formatting in description field

[Karen]

I am trying to import issues from another system. I've exported the issues to a CSV file, but the description fields do not preserve formatting. The content uses HTML tags for basic formatting such as bold, lists, etc. Once imported into Jira, the description is one big paragraph.

Is this going to be possible? If I manually copy and paste the description content, the formatting from the source is preserved, but this is not really an option for thousands of issues.

[Tim Perrault]

Hi @Karen Gwynn 

I'm wondering if this KB article would be helpful https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/during-csv-import-the-formatting-of-description-field-contents-gets-removed-1142436216.html

[Karen]

Thanks for the suggestion. I did not have that option checked, so that didn't solve it.

[Tim Perrault]

Hmm without any plugins, I think you would have to convert the HTML to wikimarkup in the csv file and then import.

[Karen]

I've started looking for a plugin, but from what I'm seeing, none seem to address the issue, which is upon importing a CSV into Jira, I want the HTML tags to be converted to Markdown. I will be importing thousands of issues, all which use formatted descriptions. It is not an option to manually copy and paste into an online tool to have the descriptions converted, I really need this to work upon import into Jira

[Tim Perrault]

From what I can gather, your best bet then is trying to convert the HTML into wikimarkup before you import the issues. I have no experience in doing this and can't recommend anything, but there are a couple different options I saw in some searches.