How to delete a story created mistakenly in JIRA?

[Aishwarya Raghavendra]

I erroneously created a story in JIRA and I want to delete it.How can this be done?

[Matthew Bliss]

It's probably a permissions setting that needs to be changed. I was able to change permissions myself without pinging my Administrator, so pretty excited that the software doesn't constrain users.

Within the desired project, I found Project Settings at the bottom of the left ribbon (same place I click on Roadmap, Backlog, and Board, just scroll down). Next, click Access. Under access, you will see the Names of your team members if the board creator has added everyone. I found my name within this list and I previously had "Member" as my "Role". I used the dropdown to add "Administrator" to my role list. Now it says "Multiple (2 roles). There was not a save button, but I think the settings are saved automatically.

Now, when I click ". . ." next to my issues, I see delete as an option.

[BlackHawke Marshall]

Not only did this work perfectly, but it showed team members who had been creating User Stories and participating in Backlog management who weren't added as members of the project!  Thanks @Matthew Bliss !

[Mark Markov]

Hello @Aishwarya Raghavendra

Go to the "more" button of issue view and click "delete"

If you did not see this option, make sure you have rights to delete issues in this project.

You can do it in Project settings -> Permissions -> Delete Issues

[Haseeb Ahmed]

This "Delete" option is not available as stated in the above answer even I am the Administrator.

[Lowell]

This is bad. If I have mistakenly created an issue, there should be a way to delete the issue if no one has used it or ... if it has only existed for some short period of time. BAD UX to provide a "Delete" button and not a "Delete" Capability.

[Jacob]

Admittedly I am new to administering JIRA, but after more than an hour of putzing around trying to delete an accidentally created story/issue I gave up and simply renamed it "FIXME: replace this with next new story".

I can't express strongly enough how frustrated I get when systems break arguably ubiquitous mental models. That's got to be in a top list of 10 UX no-nos somewhere.  I don't care how the system undoes my accidental action (e.g. can archive it away where I'll never see it), but when I do something I didn't mean to do I want there to be an obvious way to reverse it.

**Update:** I later dug into this a little further with the "Permission helper" tools, which explained to me that:

> [my user] is not a member of any of these project roles: Administrators, atlassian-addons project-access

> You can change this by going to the '[my project]' project roles and adding [my user] to the missing role(s)

Just one little teensy tiny problem there --> Project roles are evidently not included in the free plan! Why not just state right up front, "If you want to delete anything or change permissions you're going to need to purchase a subscription."? May as well not allow the status of an issue to be marked as done or not allow new projects to be created.

[Matthew Bliss]

I did not see Project Settings -> Permissions -> Delete Issues, but I found my way around the menus to get what I needed done.

Within the desired project, I found Project Settings at the bottom of the left ribbon (same place I click on Roadmap, Backlog, and Board, just scroll down). Next, click Access. Under access, you will see the Names of your team members if the board creator has added everyone. I found my name within this list and I previously had "Member" as my "Role". I used the dropdown to add "Administrator" to my role list. Now it says "Multiple (2 roles). There was not a save button, but I think the settings are saved automatically.

Now, when I click ". . ." next to my issues, I see delete as an option.

[Jon A]

Instead of deleting old stories that don't seem relevant but we don't want to delete for bookkeeping reasons, has anyone ever created an "Old"/"Junk"/etc folders under the backlog? If so, how did you do so?

[Joe Pitt]

I suggest putting 'deleted' or 'invalid' in the resolution list and closing the issue with that resolution. Being done it won't appear in the backlog. 

[Joe Pitt]

Do not delete issues. When you delete it is GONE. Hardly a week goes by without someone wanting to restore an issue. Deleting issues will come back and bite you when it is the most inconvenient. I suggest closing with a resolution value of Deleted anything you want to delete. I implement a special transition only the project lead can execute and it requires filling in a reason field. Missing issue numbers will eventually cause a question about what it was and why was it deleted even if it was done properly. Missing data always brings in the question of people hiding something that may have looked bad.

The only viable way to restore an issue is to create a new instance of JIRA and restore a backup that has the issues. Then export them to a csv file and import them to your production instance. You will lose the history

[Jacob]

There is no valid reason (to a user) not to delete an accidentally created issue. Keeping useless information around only leads to noise. Sure, I can close it, but it's still in the way, e.g. still need to adjust search filters not to show it. This should not require causing a "missing" issue number. The value that would've been used should be available for the next created item. If that causes a scaling problem or something (I have to use my imagination because my team only has 3 people) then reserve it for some time or something -- it's not an impossible problem to solve.