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Not seeing Issue Key field when importing

Katie Swanson-Wikelius

When following the instructions for importing issues into Jira for the purposes of bulk updating vs. creating new issues, I am not seeing a field for Issue Key even though it is included in the .csv file.

I've looked through a multitude of community articles and How-to's with no success and I know that it is field that I've seen available previously.

I'm running the import through the Admin settings, so I'm unsure of what may need to be changed or what might have changed since last doing an import.

Any help is appreciated!

Accepted answers

Deivid Araujo

Hi Katie!

First, are you using the old import experience or the new one?

If you're using the old import experience, just to confirm — when you search for the Issue Key field in the field mapping screen, it doesn't appear? If that's the case, have you tried searching for "Work item key" instead?

All comments

Deivid Araujo

Hi Katie!

First, are you using the old import experience or the new one?

Marc -Devoteam-

Hi @Katie Swanson-Wikelius

As @Deivid Araujo is referring are you using the new or old import option, or are you using the import option on project level and not the import option via Jira Administration?

Katie Swanson-Wikelius

I am using the old experience because I don't want to create a new project as part of the process. However, I did consider the Work Item after thinking about the recent nomenclature changes. I will try again and see if that's the case.

Katie Swanson-Wikelius

I'm using the old experience to use .csv and so existing items can be updated vs. creating new ones. However, I will see if there is a different name for the Issue Key though.

Katie Swanson-Wikelius

@Deivid Araujo I was able to find the Work Item Key as a field to map to, but in my config file I needed to change the Jira Field to Work Item Id. Otherwise, that worked! Thank you!

Deivid Araujo

Nice! I'm glad it worked

Piotr -Mederak Apps-

Hi,

two separate things are easy to mix up here:

1. Jira has been moving from “Issue” naming to “Work Item”, so in some import screens the field may now appear as Work Item Key rather than Issue Key.
2. Updating existing work items via CSV is not the same as creating new ones. In many cases you need the admin-side External System Import flow, not the regular user CSV import.

If you do not have admin access, I would not assume you can switch to the old importer yourself. Your Jira admin may need to run the import or confirm which importer experience is available in your site.

Full disclosure: I built Excel Backlog Importer for Jira. It does not give users extra Jira permissions, but it can make repeated Excel-to-Jira imports safer once the app is approved: upload XLSX, map columns, validate rows, preview updates/creates, and reduce duplicate risk before changes are applied.

So I would first solve the permission/importer access question with your admin, then decide whether native CSV is enough or whether a reviewed Excel import flow would be safer for repeated updates.

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