Delete all Projects Issues?

[Samir Freelance]

How can i delete all issues in all the projects

to have clean Projects empty from issues?

Regards,

Samir

[Markus Lepper · Accepted solution]

Hi Samir,

just a hint: After deleting all project issues the next created issue will -of course- NOT start at xxx-1, but the next free number before deletion.

To reset the issue counter you need to change the SQL-field "project > pcounter" to 0.

BR, Markus

[Samir Freelance]

thanks for the hint , I didn t yet perform a bulk delete

do you have another way to delete all issues without deleting projects?

[Markus Lepper]

Hi samir,

why should I need another option than 'Bulk Delete'? It is THE means to delete x issues at the same time.

=> Try it...it just works ;-)

BR, Markus

[Samir Freelance]

Markus i checked the link http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA043/Modifying+Multiple+%28%27Bulk%27%29+Issues

the document is not clear for Bulk delete

I clicked on the filter navigatore but there is no bulk delete ?!

please do correct me if i am wrong..

can you please tell me step by step and i will follow your guide to delete all issues from all projects i will be thankfull !

[Markus Lepper]

Hi Samir,

in any Navigator View there is on the top right side a cogwheel icon with text "Tools".

Click it and you'll find as first option "Bulk Change:"

BR, Markus

[Samir Freelance]

Markus in tools i can only see "configure columns"

in issue navigator I searched all projects there are on right side Views and Tools

i clicked the smart tag on tools it only shows " configure columns" there is no"Bulk Change"

[Markus Lepper]

Hi Samir,

Please check if you have the right to bulk change issues:

See "Administration > Global Permissions > Bulk Change"

BR, Markus

[dgc]

Are there any new answers to this? I understand that deleting directly from the database is not desirable, but I have 32,000 issues to delete and Jira's bulk change will only delete 1,000 at a time, at an interactivity cost of about 2 minutes per 1,000. That's well over an hour of nothing but staring at a screen, occasionally clicking mindlessly for punctuation. I'd love a more effective answer.

(Context: we have production and test jira instances, and we periodically clone prod to test. The test instance allows many people admin access who don't have admin in prod, so certain issues need to be removed after cloning to protect privacy.)

[Jurgen Schober]

I vote for this question. Are issues referenced anywhere. I am not a big fan of brute force deleting entries from a table, but if this is somewhat safe (delete + reindex + reset pcounters) this looks like a more efficient way. But what about linked issues, attachments, etc. Can we somehow set the threshold to unlimited instead of 1000 at a time?

[NCATS LAB]

I have the same scenario as David. I can use the database to delete all issues as Jurgen suggests, but the database still contains all the attachments. Deleting the attachments from the filesystem only throughs null pointer errors. We need a way to delete all issues and attachments, links, etc. in a testing environment.

[Maurice Müller]

Straight from the docs:

1. From the Issue Navigator, perform a search with the required filters to produce an issue result set.
2. Select the Bulk Change option from the 'Tools' menu of the Issue Navigator.

This is question was the first hit of my search for this specific task. So I added this answer that you quickly find the solution (I basically followed the link of Penny Watt and read through the docs). This hopefully will save some others precious time ;)

[Eva]

adding to Marcus + Penny's answers, I found it easier to just delete it from the database itself (that is assuming you are using an external database like I did and not HSQL that comes with JIRA). this will starts everything in clean state and you have better control of what you are deleting.

here are the SQL I used:

Delete from jiraissue where projectid =< project id here>;

commit; (or if you have auto commit, skip this step)

Update project set pcounter = 1 where id = <project id>;

commit;

And like any other Database update, it REALLLy necessary to restart JIRA after this.

[Markus Lepper]

Hi Eva,

you need to set pcounter=0, as Jira takes the next freee id when creating issues.

...just in case you want to have first issue xxx-1 :)

BR, Markus

[Alexander Johannes]

Eva,

i would not advice direct manipulation of the JIRA database. There are too many things you can mess up. Also restarting JIRA after the direct deletion in the database is not sufficient. You also have to reindex the database.

[Eva]

@Alexander - What do you mean reindex the database? What would happen if i did not reindex?

[Alexander Johannes]

If you don't reindex after a direct manipulation of the database, you will see old, inconsistent data. See also the documentation about reindexing.

[Samir Freelance]

thanks for sharing your experience

[NCATS LAB]

Eva's suggestion still leaves all the attachments in the database. Is there a way to clean these up from the database as well?

[Karsten Pawlik]

If you want to delete all attachments from the database you could use this sql statement:

delete from fileattachment;

and then remove the contents of your jira_attachments folder.

if you just want to delete the attachments linked to issues of a specific project there is no easy way to filter them out and delete them.

[Penny Wyatt (On Leave to July 2021)]

You can perform a bulk delete - http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA043/Modifying+Multiple+('Bulk')+Issues

Alternatively, you can just delete and recreate all of the projects, if there aren't too many of them.

[Penny Wyatt (On Leave to July 2021)]

In that case, the bulk delete option I suggested should work fine.

[Samir Freelance]

deleting all of the projects is not a good option ) because have more than 20 projects and every project has it s screen scheme and its workflow

I am just looking to delete all issues without deleting my products or projects

[Samir Freelance]

Okay thank I will give it a try and mark your comment as Solved asap

[Samir Freelance]

Honestly i didn t know how i can delete issue one by one ..i wasn t able to find bulk delete

plrase provide me the steps to provide Bulk delete wiithout deleting the projects(products)

again i appreciate your help

[NCATS LAB]

Penny's suggestion is well known. It is also not feasible. The bulk delete option allows only 1000 issues to delete at a time. This is a massively time consuming process even on a medium size instance. In situations where we are syncing prod to testing then deleting issues from testing, this can take a whole day just to perform a simple process.

[NCATS LAB]

Just a little update:

If you want to delete ALL issues and their attachments from Jira, this will do it (don't forget to delete the contents of <jira_home>/data/attachments/)

delete from jiraissue where project in (select id from project);
update project set pcounter = 0 where id in (select id from project);
delete from fileattachment;