How can I delete jira tickets and reset the key numbering in a project?
Asked by Steve Hooczko:

I want to delete certain tickets in a JIRA project and rest the key numbering to xyz-1, ...


Answers:
author: Joe Pitt
body: First:

**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 from a select list (such as entered in error, OBE, Duplicate, Other) and explanation text.

Deleting issues destroys historical data. 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.

None of my users have delete permission.

If you insist on deleting issues you need the delete issue permission

Second: there is no way to reset the issue number in a project.

comments: author: Steve Hooczko
body: This is just a prototype project with 5 tickets in it. It's being used to do the setup for a project that's coming, and the tickets are only to test the configuration setup. I don't care if the history on these tickets is gone. However, now that I have the project configured and tested, I want to delete these tickets and reset the issue sequence to start at xyz-1 before the "real" tickets are created.

Does this make things easier?

Can I copy this project w/o the ticket content to create a new project?

Thx


author: Joe Pitt
body: There is no 'copy' function. Here is a issue discussing what is needed

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/How-to-copy-a-project/qaq-p/1801532>


author: Steve Hooczko
body: The link you shared was mostly talking about Team-Managed projects, while my project is Company-Managed.

Within JIRA I searched on "Clone Project" and found the following, which looks like an easy way to do it and does NOT pull the issues in when cloning (i.e., numbering starts fresh in the cloned project) Moving issues over is a separate action, which I don't need to do in this case.

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-to-cloning-a-software-project-using-jira-built-in-features-such-as-csv-import-1255443825.html>

I'm good to go.


author: Aditya Ojha
body: Hello Steve,

As community members have already suggested, it is not possible to reset the issue number counter in a Jira Cloud project. We have an improvement ticket logged for this with our devs -\> [JRACLOUD-34286](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-34286) . Feel free to vote for this feature and drop your feedback in the comment section directly for the devs to view it.

You might also be interested in [JRACLOUD-78272](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-78272) which is also related.

Thank you.


author: Steve Hooczko
body: Within JIRA I searched on "Clone Project" and found the following, which looks like an easy way to do it and does NOT pull the issues in when cloning (i.e., numbering starts fresh in the cloned project) Moving issues over is a separate action, which I don't need to do in this case.

<https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-to-cloning-a-software-project-using-jira-built-in-features-such-as-csv-import-1255443825.html>

I'm good to go.


author: Jim Knepley - ReleaseTEAM
body: If you're doing something like testing issue creation and want to reset the issue sequence, you could if you're using Jira DC, but you must [update the database](https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-to-reset-the-project-counter-after-moving-issues-776643590.html) directly. There's no way in the application itself.

For cloud, I would contact support, but I wouldn't be too upset if they said no.


Tags: cloud

jira-cloud