JIRA Import Comments without author and date (text only)

Matthew Nescio

I am trying to migrate a large database (~10,000 issues with 100+ fields each) into JIRA. I have multiple fields that I would like to import as comments in JIRA, however, the previous database did not track/export the date and author in a useful format. Is there any way to import the comments to JIRA as text without an author and date?

If not, is my best option to put placeholder dates (e.g. today) and users (e.g. me) in front of all the comments before importing to JIRA? I would prefer not to do this because my import files are already 4-5 times the 10 Mb maximum and splitting them into seperate files is a pain.

Earl McCutcheon

Hello @Matthew Nescio ,

Comment import form CSV requires the format:

"Date Time;<userid>;comment detail"

By default the date and time format "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm a", Example:

"<span>28/06/2021 3:30</span>;Admin; This comment works"

Would be used for the timestamp mask in Jira, but can be modified to an alternate formatting at the first step of the CSV import.

Then You can import issues with multiple comments by entering each comment in a separate column. 

The "Date Time" stamp and "Author" tag must be included to be imported, as comments cannot exist without an author or a timestamp.  The formatting is covered in more detail in 

• Import data from a CSV file

So the workaround you noted of importing all the comments as a single user and time would be a doable workaround, but far from optimal, I would recommend attempting to reconcile the original formatting.

You noted that when you previously did the export the date and author did not come out in a useful format.  What did the previous export look like?  Let's try to track down the export issue to streamline the data so it imports successfully into the new system to save headaches down the road.

Regards,
Earl