How to revert to previous saved version of a story

[Fiona Morrison]

I'm trying to revert to the previous saved version of a story in Jira.

Found this help article https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/page-history-and-page-comparison-views-139379.html

However, there is no "page history" option in the ellipsis dropdown as per the instructions.

I can see the previous versions at the bottom of my story when I select "history" under activities, but there is no option to revert from there. I can copy and paste the content from that history but all the styling is stripped out. It's a MASSIVE story and I don't want to have to reformat the whole thing.

I thought it might be my permissions but our Jira admin person also can't see the page history under the ellipses. 

[Warren · Accepted solution]

Hi @Fiona Morrison 

The link that you've included is for Confluence, which does indeed keep a history of the changes and it allows you to revert.

Unfortunately, Jira doesn't have that functionality and the only way I know of "reverting" is to check changes in the History section.

[Fiona Morrison]

Ahh right, thanks Warren for getting back to me. Looks like I'm reformatting! At least there's still a history!

[Manrique Soto]

Hi

Where is the history section of the ticket? On a next Gen project. 

[Cole Diffin]

I've just come into the same isssue - Large ticket description with formatiting, lost. And its in the description with what appears to be the old style markedown sytnax.

but the new editor dosn't accept the old style markdown.

So I need to reformat all my headings, all my lists, all my tables.

Can the new editor support (or transform) || | | style tables, and (/) when pasted in, as well as * bulleted lists and the older h4. h3. style headings. Thatd be Fab!

[Philipp Ebert]

It amazes me that there is still not a proper solution for this.

[Owen Scott]

Seriously. I don't see the point of the history feature if I can't revert with formatting applied.

[Conrado Borchez]

What a true masterpiece of garbage Jira is. Can't believe how you can lost cooperative work and not have a proper version control.

[Connor Sadler]

Still no proper solution for JIRA cloud in March 2023?

Just tried to copy and paste from history for some ACs, and I get all the tags shown instead of the formatting

[Christine Marie Effat]

Yes, it is really not at all helpful, if the History is so encrypted and not kept with format. Also wondering why this feature has not been implemented yet.

Really very painful effort to redo your tickets and inefficient from Jira to not enable it. 

[Yuliia_Borivets__SaaSJet_]

Hi @Christine Marie Effat @Connor Sadler 

I have some news for everyone who is looking for how to revert the previous version of the description with initial formatting. My team has also struggled with this problem, so we've implemented this feature for Issue History for Jira app. The free trial is available for 30 days.

Maybe it will be helpful for someone here. Here is the documentation to read about how it works.

Text formatting (bold, color, lists, tables) will be preserved. The only exception is attachments. As Jira does not store attachments after removal, you can only return the name of the removed format. 

[Adam Elkhayyat]

I had something similar happen to me, what worked for me was:

1. Copying the history you wish to revert back to from the "History" tab (this will have the old formatting of Jira).
2. Afterwards you'll want to add to the URL of the ticket "?oldIssueView=true"... this will take you to the old view of the ticket. The old view supports the formatting you wish to maintain from the history you copied.
   
   Example of URL of a ticket opened in old format:
   https://test.atlassian.net/browse/TICKET-12345?oldIssueView=true
3. Now you can paste the history (copied in step 1) in place of the existing description of the ticket.
   
4. Save and it should auto-format!

 PS: If you wish to first test this, you can also paste the history onto a new test ticket (with oldIssueView=true in URL) just to not pollute the existing ticket you want to fix with broken history.

Hope this helps.

Edit 1: Apparently this method doesn't support media recovery unfortunately.

[Manuel Lorite]

Media doesn't seems to be recoverable but this helped a lot to avoid loss of work.
Thank you :)

[Tony Redondo]

Thanks Adam. This is a life saving response!

[Avi Yeger]

Thanks Adam. Like Tony said this is a life saving response indeed!! 

[Konstantin Ryazantsev _SC_]

Thanks, Adam, this works well!

[Anita Chitragar]

Viewing story description in history loses formatting so not that useful. Thank you Adam for this information. 

[Andrea Kunkel]

@Adam ElkhayyatThe old issue view isn't working for me. Just wondering if they removed this feature. If you're still around would you mind testing if it still works for you?

Edit: I just found an article saying that "we’ll start removing all access to the old issue view from January 2023". Looks like this solution really doesn't work anymore.

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Jira-Cloud-s-old-issue-view-is-going-away-soon/ba-p/2208963

[Zeno]

This is completely INSANE

[Tracy Moffat]

Yup - doesn't work anymore

[Candice Gray]

Ah! Amazing, worked a treat thank you!

[Carole Girard]

Is there an issue opened for this that we can vote for?

We have also lost some information in issues because of parallel editing. The information is available in the History, but since we work with tables, it is impossible to just cut and paste the information back in the issue. 

This is annoying, for the least.  

We use Jira to track label review and translation during a sprint. Made sense to put everything in Jira as it provides status tracking and visibility.

[Adam Hughes]

The history does not preserve formatting as far as I can tell.  It also loses media.  I've had rich tickets that took hours to compose be removed by people who errantly edited them and I could NOT recover from history alone.  Really really would like to see a proper versioning capability!

Is there a plugin that supports this?

[Adam Elkhayyat]

Hey Adam,

I had something similar happen to me, what worked for me was:

1. Copying the history you wish to revert back to from the "History" tab (this will have the old formatting of Jira).
2. Afterwards you'll want to add to the URL of the ticket "?oldIssueView=true"... this will take you to the old view of the ticket. The old view supports the formatting you wish to maintain from the history you copied.
   
   Example of URL of a ticket opened in old format:
   https://test.atlassian.net/browse/TICKET-12345?oldIssueView=true
3. Now you can paste the history (copied in step 1) in place of the existing description of the ticket.
   
4. Save and it should auto-format!

PS: If you wish to first test this, you can also paste the history onto a new test ticket (with oldIssueView=true in URL) just to not pollute the existing ticket you want to fix with broken history.

Hope this helps.

[Bobby Connolly]

I tried this method but it did not restore the formatting for me

I think the next best thing is to use VSCODE to show the before and after and then re-create it from there.

[Valeryia Hrudnina]

I registered here just to say thank you, it helped and it's wonderful. Many thanks! 

[al]

I also have this issue. Any help?

[Pat Meloy]

Wild that there are so many work arounds, most of which no longer work, for such an anticipated issues we are all running into. Thanks to all you who have posted these. 

Please Just build a "revert" option in the history!

[Recurly Operations]

After reading through a bunch of these posts what worked for me was to edit the description after copying the markdown from the history section and then clicking on the Text button on the bottom instead of Visual and then paste in.  When that saves the formatting was restored.

[Carole Girard]

Unfortunately, this is not available on Cloud. 

[Stephen Tobin]

Ahh... that explains why this does NOT work at all. I remember the toggle that used to exist (Visual v Text edit mode) when I was using the Server version, but def not there on Cloud Jira.