Forums

Articles
Create
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Unable to edit or remove parent work item

Simon Pearce
I'm New Here
I'm New Here
Those new to the Atlassian Community have posted less than three times. Give them a warm welcome!
September 4, 2025

How do I change the Epic that my work item is linked to?

Following the official instructions, I opened the Command Palette and looked for either Edit Parent or Remove Parent but found neither of them.

Do I need a specific Project permission to do this? I am an administrator of the Project and of the application.

2 answers

0 votes
Staffan Redelius
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
September 4, 2025

Hi @Simon Pearce 

It works for me if i click exactly on the  icon for the parent (for Epics it's the purple icon) seems to work the same way if you click on the icon in the breadcrumb. If I click on the name/link i get re-directed to the Epic.

Could it be that simple?

Best regards,
/Staffan

0 votes
Walter Buggenhout
Community Champion
September 4, 2025

Hi @Simon Pearce and welcome to the Community!

It should be as simple as just clicking into the Parent field and either clicking the x icon there to remove the current parent or start typing to select a different parent.

Screenshot 2025-09-04 at 13.35.56.png

If you want to modify details of the parent item itself, then you'll need to open that parent item itself and edit its details directly in the work item itself.

Can you be more specific as to what exactly you are trying to achieve, how you are trying to do this and what problems you experience when you try to do it that way? Not sure why you would use the command palette to change the parent of a work item.

Hope this helps!

Walter Buggenhout
Community Champion
September 4, 2025

You can quickly navigate to a work item's parent by clicking its issue key from the breadcrumbs at the top of your work item view, by the way:

Screenshot 2025-09-04 at 13.40.32.png

Simon Pearce
I'm New Here
I'm New Here
Those new to the Atlassian Community have posted less than three times. Give them a warm welcome!
September 4, 2025

Thanks for the warm welcome Walter!

Yes, I was expecting to hover over the Parent link in the right pane and click to edit it. Instead, when I click I am taken to the Parent.

Screenshot 2025-09-04 124727.png

When that happened I consulted documentation which suggest the Command Palette.

Edit the parent of a work item with your keyboard | Jira Cloud | Atlassian Support

 

Walter Buggenhout
Community Champion
September 4, 2025

In my instance, following those steps opens the following dialog:

Screenshot 2025-09-04 at 14.00.30.png

Almost exactly the same behaviour as what I described in my reply, but indeed after pressing CMD+K on my mac keyboard. I don't use that feature from the command palette in real life myself, since I tend to pin the parent field to my pinned fields list on my work items, so I don't have to search for it on the screen.

The only scenario where I can imagine the command palette workaround to be useful, is if it is hard to locate the parent field on a busy screen ...

Suggest an answer

Log in or Sign up to answer
DEPLOYMENT TYPE
CLOUD
PRODUCT PLAN
PREMIUM
TAGS
AUG Leaders

Atlassian Community Events