Is it possible to archive customfields in Jira Cloud

[Kasturee]

Hello

Is it possible to archive custom fields in Jira Cloud? I do not see an option available for this. I do not want to delete the custom field because I do not want to lose the data captured against the field. Due to audit requirements we need to keep the data on the system for a number of years.

If it's not possible, please can you provide some guidance on how you do it to as we would like to maintain a clean instance and keep just the relevant data active.

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kasturee 

There is no way to archive a custom field. If you delete it, it will remain on your trashcan for 60 days. After that it's bye bye.

Usually, in types of multi select fields we disable the values in order for the information not to get lost from the existing issues.

If you don't want to use a CF anymore, I would suggest that you remove it from all screens that you don't want it to show or simply remove it from all EDIT issue screens, in order not to be changed. Then you could also rename the custom field to with a suffix of e.g. "_deprecated" or similar and change the description in order to point to the new custom field (if any).

Hope the above make sense.

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_]

And this is the issue with your suggestion https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-16184 which you can vote and watch.

[Kasturee]

Thanks Alex for the feedback. I thought it would be the case of using a suffix to indicate a custom field no longer required. We currently do this on server by adding "Archive" to the name but was hoping cloud would have built this functionality and we could archive once we migrate to cloud.

The Jira issue link provided is for disabling options on custom fields but I see this ticket https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-17813 relates to archiving custom field but has been closed as Won't Do unfortunately.

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_]

Ohh... my bad about the wrong link. Sorry :)

It's good that you've found the actual link yourself, and bad that this is set as won't do. However you can create a new suggestion. Will not harm anyone to be honest.

[Mia Bright]

I would really like this as an option too. We have an old project that had SO many custom fields that aren't relevant anymore but we can't remove them as we need the historical data from the tickets in that project. It is frustrating still seeing all those custom fields in our list as it makes everything messy. I wish we could archive them!