How to get deleted comments in Jira?

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Comments in Jira are great helpers to communicate with your team. Asking questions, locating resources, getting thoughts and new ideas, requesting feedback, and @tagging coworkers all help to convey progress better. What happens if someone deletes a comment on a Jira issue? Is it possible to find or recover deleted comments?

If you are looking for updated comments, check How to track comments history in Jira

Does history keep data about deleted Jira comments?

The history section under the issue’s Activity tab is handy if you want to see any past changes made to the task. For example, it can show you how the description or summary was updated: what was added/removed. Regarding comments, it’s impossible to get the deleted comment. There isn't a built-in mechanism in Jira to retrieve or read deleted comments, so deleting a comment is usually a permanent action. 

The only info the history provides is that the comment was deleted, but it doesn’t show the comment itself.

A solution to see deleted comments in Jira

Some organizations may have backup and restore procedures in place that could potentially be used to recover deleted comments, though this would depend on how your Jira instance is configured.

Another workaround you may try is Jira add-ons from the Atlassian Marketplace that could enable audit logging or tracking changes, including deleted comments. One of these apps is Issue History for Jira. It records all updates made to the issue fields, including comments. 

With Issue History for Jira, you can see what was the comment before deleting:

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You can even get a deleted table or link. Just click on the raw to view all the text:

*The only exception is the deleted image. You can only see the file name, not the image itself because Jira doesn’t allow it to be stored.

The app has two options to review the history of changes: for a single issue and for multiple issues in one report. For instance, you want to see changes made to comments for all issues in your project.

That’s a great way to monitor all past activities, like comment history. You can select any standard or custom field and add it to the table (use Columns Manager). For example, status, summary, description, assignee, time spent, etc.

Additionally, you can track and restore deleted issues + revert changes made to the description. 

In Summary

As there is no built-in option to read or recover deleted comments in Jira, you can try other ways to make it possible. It can be a backup taken before the comment is deleted or plugins with the ability to track deleted comments. Issue History for Jira allows users to see a comment deleted:

- for a single issue

- for the list of issues based on the filters selected.

Try to get deleted comments with Issue History for Jira