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How to import items that parent link to items in a different project?

James George Lance_ Jr

How do I import a list of items that must be parent linked to an item in a different project in Jira? I have tried using the Jira issue identifier (example: PBK-18) and I have tried using the Jira Parent's issue id (example 664401) to map to the "Parent" and I tried mapping to the "Parent Link" and neither works.

I have also tried copying the url and map that to the parent or parent link. Does not work.

How do I do this?

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @James George Lance_ Jr

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Are you trying to link subtasks to a story/task item, a story/task item to an Epic, or an Epic to a higher level custom item?

What is the outcome for each of the scenarios you tried? Do you get some sort of message?

How have you accessed the import functionality? Are you accessing it as an end user (with no admin permissions) or as an Administrator?

All comments

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @James George Lance_ Jr

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Are you trying to link subtasks to a story/task item, a story/task item to an Epic, or an Epic to a higher level custom item?

What is the outcome for each of the scenarios you tried? Do you get some sort of message?

How have you accessed the import functionality? Are you accessing it as an end user (with no admin permissions) or as an Administrator?

James George Lance_ Jr

My hierarchy in Jira is Epics, then Features, then Stories or Tasks, then sub tasks. My Epics are in one Jira Project, my Features are in another Jira Project, and my Stories/Tasks/subTasks are in other projects unique to each team. We link everything and use Plans to see the connection of everything.

I am trying to upload a program that someone created in MS Project by uploading the Feature items into my Feature project but I need the Parent Link to link to 1 Epic in the Epic project. I cannot figure out what I need in my CSV file so that when I use the External System Import "old experience" it uploads the appropriate parent linking to my Epic

Trudy P Claspill

For linking a Level 1 item (your Feature) to an existing Level 2 item (your Epic) you need two columns in your CSV;

a field to hold an "id" number which is a unique integer per item within your CSV
a field to hold the item key (XXX-123) for the target Epic

In your field mapping, like #1 to "Work item id" and #2 to "Parent Link"

Screenshot 2026-05-08 at 11.32.20 AM.png

When I did that, and both projects were Company Managed Software, the link between the new Level 1 item and the pre-existing Level 2 item was created.

James George Lance_ Jr

OMG that worked I could just kiss you.

What I discovered playing around with this. I did one test upload with 1 Feature and my unique ID was a random number "21". And the link did not work. Then I tried again and made this number "1" and then it worked.

I just ran another file with more items and this method works. The ID must be in order starting with the number 1.

Thank you very much!!!

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