I need to retrieve the original description format from the history logs after the migration.

[Veena Kunchala]

During the migration process, we missed selecting the retain option for several issue types, which resulted in the description field being lost in the destination project. Now, when I try to restore the description from the history logs of ticket from destination project, the value appears distorted and not in plain text or the original format. How can I recover the actual format from the history?

[Rahul_RVS]

Hi @Veena Kunchala 

You may want to have a look at a mktplace app for extracting issue changelogs along with the description field.

We have built an app to extract changelog data in a simple and easy to use interface. The data can be easily exported to a CSV file as well.

It provides complete details of who changed the data, what was changed and when.

Issue History Reports

Do give it a try.

Disclaimer : I am part of the app dev team

[Petru Simion _Simitech Ltd__]

Hi @Veena Kunchala ,

If the description field wasn’t retained during migration, recovering it from Jira history alone is often difficult. Jira history logs usually store change diffs and formatted payloads (ADF/wiki/HTML), not clean rendered text — which is why the values you see now look distorted.

In this scenario, tools that store both history and full issue snapshots can help.

For example, Issue History Reporter for Jira , released by our team, captures not only field change history but also issue snapshot values. Snapshots store the full field content at a specific moment in time — not just the change delta — which makes it possible to recover the description in a readable format if a snapshot exists from before or around the migration.

Practical recovery approach:

• Jira history → technical change records (hard to reconstruct cleanly)

• Issue snapshot → full saved description value (easy to restore)

If snapshots were collected for those issues prior to migration, you should be able to retrieve the original description from there. If no snapshot exists, then recovery typically requires parsing the stored ADF/markup from the history data rather than simple copy-paste.

You can then export the recovered snapshot values to CSV and use that file to reinsert the descriptions back into the real issues (manually or via bulk update/API).

Regards, 

Petru

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Veena Kunchala 

What does the current content look like?

But I think you best option is to contact Atlassian support and raise an issue.

I'm kinda not sure that you can fix this issue yourself.