"Components" Column csv Export Issue : Multiple Values cause download trouble.

[Pawan Dwivedi]

This is more a FUNCTIONALITY ISSUE.

If a field (e.g. COMPONENTS) have multiple values, and if the particular issue with multiple VALUES is downloaded,(via CSV Export) and opened up. The MULTIPLE ENTRIES comes in that many COLUMNS.

e,g. if the COMPONENTS field have values like "abc", "xyz" and "pqr", after CSV download when the file is opened. THREE SEPARATE COLUMNS comes with first column having value "abc", second column having "xyz" value and third column having "pqr" value.

THE ACTUAL PROBLEM here is that the DOWNLOAD and REPORTING functionality is DEEPLY IMPACTED BY THIS BEHAVIOR because with this dynamic COLUMN STRUCTURE, a REPORTING TEMPLATE (In Excel) cannot be made.

Is there any WORKAROUND to this issue?

Thanks,

Pawan

[Haddon Fisher]

Hey Pawan,

This is a change introduced when JIRA moved from .xls to .csv files and is allegedly to support re-importing into JIRA. There's a bunch of tickets around this on jira.atlassian.com, but this is to optionally re-enable the 'normal' method.

The workaround (such as it is) that I've found is to export as HTML, which works as expected.

[Graeme Lowe]

I got excited by your workaround until I found that I am not given the option to export from Jira as HTML. How did you do it please?

[Haddon Fisher]

Hi Graeme:

I'm on server so experiences may be different if you're on Cloud, but:

1. Do your search as normal in 'Issue Navigator'.
2. In the top-right, go to the 'Export' drop-down.
3. There should be several format options (RSS, CSV, HTML, XML).

CSV and HTML will also allow you to export either 'All Fields' or 'Current Fields'...

• "All Fields" will literally give you the value of every field that set of issues is scoped to possibly have, so you will see a lot of nulls.
• "Current Fields" will only include fields whose columns you have currently selected in your 'issue navigator' view. This is most useful when you have filter-specific fields.

[Graeme Lowe]

Hi Haddon

Thanks for your reply. The HTML option wasn't available to me in our cloud version. I did find a workaround though. It is very clunky and a few steps in it, but it is better than no option at all. 

Once the List View is selected and the columns selected and ordered as desired:

• Select Export>Print List

This gives an HTML view. Then:

• Ctrl A>Ctrl C
• In Excel, Paste Special>Match Destination Format

The Pros:

• Most fields will place a comma between multiple field values, so the columns remain consistent for standardisation of customised reports

The Cons:

• Any free text fields in Jira with separate lines or paragraphs are imported into Excel in separate rows, so do not align with the rest of the issue data. Therefore these ought to be avoided. The workaround I am using in these cases is to use the search and bulk change functions in Jira. It takes longer and you have to be careful you're aligning your Jira work and your Excel spreadsheet where necessary, but it is better than having to do everything within individual issues.