Deleting a custom field (consequences)

Rahul Aich [Nagra]
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January 19, 2014

Hi

I have tens of custom fields on my jira instance which i no longer need. Some of them however, have some data in it.

Now, i want to get rid of those custom fields as the data in them are no longer required.

My questions are

1. If i delete a custom field which has data in them, what is the consequence on the issues which used those custom fields. Will they throw any errors?

2. What is the consequence on the database? Is there a possibility of causing an irreversible damage to the database which might cause a threat to me in future upgrades?

3. What about deleting custom fields which were created by a plugin which i had installed sometime in past but no longer use it?

Rahul

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Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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January 19, 2014

1. No, as long as you do it with the UI.

2. No impact really, as long as you delete via the UI. Just make sure that you allow some time to run it - if you have lots of issues, it can thrash while the deletion of data happens

3. To do that safely, you usually have to put the plugin back, then you can delete via the UI as above.

Note that I've said "use the UI" on all three of these. That includes the script runner or plugins that do the work, but NOT SQL. If you try this with SQL, then the answers include high risk of corruption, error and data-loss.

Rahul Aich [Nagra]
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January 19, 2014

Nic, I have a field Bugzilla Id (type: import id). This field was created automatically when i migrated bugzilla-> Jira using the importer.

Now am i right in assuming that there will be no impact in deleting such custom fields which got created during imports from other issue trackers?

Hanna Kutkowska July 13, 2014

Hi,

and how we can idetify if deleted custom fields haven't been used in some tasks, but now we are using newer one. Or in other words, how we can prevent from losing a data related from deleted custom fields, but delete the custom field itself.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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July 13, 2014

You can't. If you delete a custom field, the data for it goes. You'll see changes to it in the issue history, but the data will be gone.

Francisco Gimeno June 22, 2018

What if I restrict the customfield for a specific IssueType? will the data for others IssueType having historical information will be removed?

If not, how can I remove it?

Carla Ann Rowland
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December 3, 2020

Hi @Francisco Gimeno 

A custom field when it is deleted it is removed globally; any issue type that utilizes the CF will be impacted. A custom field goes by it's CF[...]. Restricting it to an issue type doesn't change its identification in the database.  That is why it is best to do the checks and use the correct UI to remove them (see Nic's contribution in this thread). 

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