What happens when you remove a field from a project?

[Bryan Karsh]

Hi,

Let's say you have a project with several issues in it -- the issues have a particular field populated with data -- let's call it foo.

If I remove foo from the project screens -- what happens to the data previously stored in foo? Is the foo/project relationship still stored somewhere? Would search still pick up issues that had previously used this field?

Was curious. Thanks!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

It depends on how you remove the field.

Derrick already covered two cases:

• Removing from the screen - no effect, other than you can't see it (Assuming it's removed from the view screen) or add/amend values (if removed from Create, Edit or transition screens)
• Deleting the field from Jira - gone, dead, need to go to a backup of the database to get it

The other two are:

• Removed from field context
• Removed from field configuration

In both cases, existing data will remain, but won't be searchable in simple search.

[Derrick Taylor David]

"Foo" would still be stored with the issue. You can still search for it and unless you delete the field "Foo" from all of Jira, the data woulc still remain to be populated again at a later date.