How to restore deleted stories

Question

Hi Team,

I have accidentally deleted 545 stories in Jira and not sure how to restore them.

Can you suggest ways to bring them back? I have Jira Admin access. I see restore, but not the whole thing, I want to only bring the 545 stories back. Please suggest.

Thank you

Joe Pitt · Answer

Going forward

Do not delete issues. When you delete it is GONE. Hardly a week goes by without someone wanting to restore an issue. Deleting issues will come back and bite you when it is the most inconvenient. I suggest closing with a resolution value of Deleted anything you want to delete. I implement a special transition only the project lead can execute and it requires filling in a reason field from a select list (such as entered in error, OBE, Duplicate, Other) and explanation text.

Deleting issues destroys historical data. Missing issue numbers will eventually cause a question about what it was and why was it deleted even if it was done properly. Missing data always brings in the question of people hiding something that may have looked bad.

The only viable way to restore an issue is to create a new instance of JIRA and restore a backup that has the issues. Then export them to a csv file and import them to your production instance. You will lose the history.

Abdulkarim Itani · Answer

Default backup settings for Jira Software on Server is daily on midnight. And you will be able to revert back to the last back up which will restore all 545 stories.

You may find the daily backups in:

<jira-home>\backup

Note, Jira doesnt take back up for any attachments unless the backup was done manually or automated.

Jack Brickey · Answer

:-(

it will all come down to your backups. if you happen to have a backup right before deleting you could restore. however, any changes since the backup would be lost which could be worse then losing the 545.