Can I change issue type from Epic to Story?

user22 March 27, 2018

I see I can change an issue type from Epic to Sub-Task. Can I change the issue type to Story? Or do I need to delete and create a new issue as a story?

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Jonny Adams
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March 27, 2018

Under Administration>Issues select "Issue Type Screen Schemes" and find the scheme associated with the project you are working in then click on configure. Does the Issue type Story have the same Screen Scheme as Epic? If so, then you should be able to just edit the issue type field in the issue (assuming you have permission). If the schemes are different then you can try using move.

In the issue there should be a "More" button. Click on the button and below "Convert to Sub-task" should be an option to "Move". You should be able to move the issue to story and choose what to do with fields that are present/required in one scheme and not the other. 

Jonny Adams
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March 29, 2018

@user22 if this answer resolved your issue, please click accept. 

Thanks!

emmanuel November 13, 2019

@Jonny Adams 

What happens when an Epic has tasks or stories linked to it and the Epic is changed into a Story?

Are these stories moved to tasks / sub-tasks of the Story? or does they need to be re-added as sub-tasks?

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Marta Ogonovska April 30, 2020

Thanks, Jonny, also worked for me!

zach.l May 18, 2020

Excellent. Thank you very much :-)

Rolf Lader
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December 7, 2021

@emmanuelhas anyone answered your absolutely legitimate question?

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Shailendra Thakur January 8, 2022

It seems Atlassian does not know the answer to that.

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gil_aguilar February 18, 2022

Thanks this helped me today. I created some bugs by accident as they are flagged differently, they needed to be stories. 

The above steps helped to resolve my situation thanks for sharing the knowledge cheers.

Deleted user March 31, 2022

I converted in Epic into Story, but I'm not able to put the Story in another Epic. All I can do is associate the Story as child, or parent or reference of the Epic.

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Yoel Feuermann June 20, 2023

Success!

This is how I did it:
Just choose More -> and select "Move"
You will be prompted to add missing fields data.
Click next -> review changes and click "Move".
Done

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Gutt Marc October 20, 2023

@emmanuel @Rolf Lader 

Sadly converting an Epic incl Child Tasks to a Story with Sub-Tasks does not work as during the move operation you need to select the parent issue for the Sub-Tasks, which must be a Story and at this step of the conversion the parent is still an Epic. So it is impossible to directly convert an Epic to a Story if it contains Child Tasks.

In addition a warning: If you convert an Epic with Child Tasks to a Story and set "Task" for the Child Tasks, their parent is removed without (!) warning (as a Story can't have Tasks as Child). So you finally would get a Story and all Child Tasks are independent Tasks on their own! And you can't rollback this change! 

A "workaround":

  • create a dummy Story
  • move the Epic with its child issues
  • select for the Epic the new type "Story" and for the child issues select "Sub-Task", which forces you to select a Story
  • choose the dummy Story
  • execute the move operation
  • your Epic is a Story and its child Tasks are Sub-Tasks of the dummy
  • open the dummy Story
  • click on the three dots above the Sub-Tasks list and make a bulk-change
  • select all Sub-Tasks
  • now choose the correct Story
  • execute the move operation
  • your Epic with child Tasks has become a Story with Sub-Tasks

Now you can re-use the dummy Story for other Epics, which needed to be converted, too, but you have to do this for each Epic separately.

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Rolf Lader
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February 2, 2024

Hello @Gutt Marc

Thank you for listing all the restrictions that today prevent you from NOT being able to move an Epic with all its dependencies (links, subtasks, ...) into a task or vice versa.

Nevertheless, this is a functionality that Jira (Cloud and DC) urgently needs. This is where Atlassian needs to expand the two-layer basic model of task/subtask to a three-layer model of epic/task/subtask.

I would be delighted if Atlassian managed to break up and expand this basic structure. The alternative of sticking with the current model will sooner or later mean the death of Jira and consequently the death of Atlassian.

 

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