Hot tip: Copy-paste your existing work into Jira Software

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Did you know there’s a simple way to bring existing work into team-managed projects in Jira Software?

If you have a list of work items in a document or spreadsheet, you can copy and paste the content directly into Jira, and choose whether or not to auto-create multiple issues at once. Each new line of text (or each cell in a spreadsheet or table) can automatically become a separate issue.

Here’s how:

1. Copy the existing content from your external document or spreadsheet to your clipboard. (Make sure each work item/task is on a new line, or in a separate cell on a spreadsheet/table. You can have a maximum of 255 characters per task, and can copy a maximum of 20 tasks at a time.)

2. There are two ways to copy-paste existing work:

   • In a team-managed scrum project, go to the backlog, and select + Create issue under a sprint or under the backlog section:
     

   • In a team-managed kanban project, you can go to the board or backlog, and select + Create issue at the bottom of a column on the board (see example below) or at the bottom of the backlog:
     
     

3. Paste your content. You will be given the option to auto-create multiple issues (in the example below, 20 lines of text have been copy/pasted), or create a single issue (if you’ve copied less than 255 characters):
   
   

And that’s it! You can copy/paste up to 20 work items at a time.