How do I find all issues where a custom field contains data?

Question

This is in regards to cleaning up our custom fields in JIRA Cloud. We are going through each custom field to see which issues are using that field. The best way we have found so far is to use advanced searching by looking for issues where that custom field is not null. However, this does not provide accurate results. We currently have ~16,000 issues, so it does not seem feasible to export to excel in 1000 issue chunks.

Is there syntax in advanced search to accurately provide the wanted results, or an alternative way of getting the data we need?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Jennifer Hall_967i4j · Answer

... and, as it turns out, you are completely correct;:my index was damaged. Once business hours were over, we were able to re-index and that solved the problem. We will make sure, in the future, we perform cleanups during off hours, so we can re-index after removing a custom field.

I appreciate the help, and the reminder to re-index when changes to the configuration are made. I will make sure to exhaust all options prior to submitting to this forum.

On a side note, I am glad that we did find the best way for custom field optimization; thank you for reinforcing that fact.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

>use advanced searching by looking for issues where that custom field is not null. However, this does not provide accurate results

It will provide 100% accurate results unless your index is damaged.  This is by far the best way to find what you're looking for, but, as you say it is "inaccurate", there's a problem that needs to be fixed first.  What makes you say that it is "inaccurate"?  Where are you seeing inconsistent answers?