Jira export to printable - Import to excel description over multiple lines

[Seamus Largey]

When I export from Jira to printable format and then import to excel

Data tab  -- > From Web  -- Paste  URL --> Go -->  Import

Jira description comes out in excel over multiple lines, anyone know to get description on a single line in excel in this format?

Thanks

Seamus

[Natalia_Kovalchuk_SaaSJet_]

Hi @Seamus Largey !

If you are considering third-party apps for export, I can recommend Issue History for Jira from my team.

It exports to Excel without formatting loss and keeps descriptions in a readable, single-line format. It also includes full change history, comments, and other useful reporting options.

Also, you can use these helpful guides related to Jira export options:

• Jira Excel Export: How to Get a Full Task History in Minutes
• Jira PDF Export: Get a Full Change History with Comments

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Seamus Largey 

If you are open to using a third party app, then generally speaking, the Better Excel Exporter for Jira app works better with the details like the one you mentioned.

In case of multi-line text values (description, comment, multi-line text type custom fields,  etc.) it preserves the line breaks for readability, yet exports the text to a single cell:

I think this is the expected behavior, but try this on your Jira site for free.

(Discl. this paid and supported app is developed by our team. Free for 10 users!)

[Birkan Yildiz _OBSS_]

Hello @Seamus Largey ,

First, welcome to the Community!

Unfortunately, there is no sustainable way to force the Printable View HTML to serialize multi-line data correctly using Excel’s native scraper.

To solve this permanently and ensure all your future reports are clean, you need a solution that pulls data directly from Jira's API and serializes it using proper CSV or XLSX standards.

 If you are open to using a 3rd party app from Atlassian Marketplace, I recommend Historian - History Explorer for Jira to get the desired export as CSV and XLSX files.

Historian is designed for robust data extraction (primarily history, but it exports all standard fields) and automatically handles the serialization of multi-line fields like Description, comments, and change logs.

By using Historian's built-in export function (which creates a clean CSV or XLSX file), the Description field will reliably remain on a single row in Excel, exactly where it belongs.

This saves you the headache of manually cleaning up data sprawl every time you run a report. Hope this helps.

Disclosure: I am on the team that develops Historian. 

To learn more about Historian - History Explorer for Jira, visit Atlassian Marketplace.

Regards,
Birkan