How to delete all project issues efficiently?

Balint Nagy

Hi,

I have to migrate tasks from another system to Jira, approximately 17000. When testing the migration, it's really painful to clean up, as bulk operations are limited to 1000 at a time. I had that raised to 10000, but bulk operations failed for such an amount. We lowered it to 5000, and lived with that for a while, but then Jira started to fail for 4000, than for 3000, then for 2000 at a time...

I'd need a solution that

a.) Quickly deletes all issues from a Jira project (I don't mind if issue numbering is reset or is continued).

b.) Have the bulk operation run for as many issues as possible at a time. (this is the less preferred solution as it is really slow, but I can live with that)

I'd rather not delete the project itself, as it has a bunch of configuration applied to it (workflow, screen, issue schemes, etc.).

Any ideas?

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-

You could script it, but it's not going to be faster than bulk-delete.

The easiest way really is "delete project", as that will just churn through all the issues, there's no limit on the number in the project.  If you do delete a project, then there's some points to remember:

• Deleting a project does NOT delete the schemes, even if they were only for that project.  You could take a screenshot of the schemes the project uses, delete it and then create a new project and tell it to use the old schemes
• You can NOT reuse a project key, unless you're willing to do database hacks (you can't delete project ABC and then create another one with key ABC)
• If you do delete projects, as I said, the schemes will be in place, but you will have to check all your custom field contexts.  If they're all global, or done by issue-type, that'll be fine, but if you have a field that had a context of "only show in projects ABC, DEF and GHI", then deleting project ABC will remove that and you'll need to re-add it.