How do I bulk import pre-formatted description text in JIRA Cloud?

[Chris Santeramo]

I've been a long time user of JIRA Server version. My new company only uses JIRA Cloud.  I make A LOT of JIRA tickets everyday.  On server version I loved being able to bulk import tickets via a spreadsheet set up to export to csv.  I learned the markup language so I could pre-format the text that would appear in the description fields. For instance, bold words could be formatted with asterisks, numbered lists with # and even simple tables with | .  I cannot figure out to get this to work on the cloud version. We have our description field already set to wiki style renderer.  Does the new WYSIWYG editor in JIRA Cloud prevent me from importing pre-formatted text?

Here's an example of what I'm calling pre-formatted text:

*BoldWord*

# NumberedList01.

#NubmeredList02

||*Column01BoldTableHeader*||

|Column01Cel01Text|

|Column01Cel02Text|

|Column01Cel03Text| 

[Christian Aquino · Accepted solution]

@Chris Santeramo in my recent experience, it seems that the Markup documentation (and not markdown) seems to match what I've seen

I had something like this in my import csv file

## Heading

And in markdown, this should be a heading

But in my resulting ticket, it turned into a numbered list, but in Markup, this is a numbered list. I'm going to experiment by using markup notation instead...

[Angélica Luz · Accepted solution]

Hello Chris,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

On Jira Cloud, the new editor has changed for Classic and Next-gen project and most of the users are already using the new editor, which uses markdown and not markup.

All the details about how to format the text using markdown, you can find on the documentation below:

• Markdown guide - Extended Syntax
• Markdown guide - Basic Syntax

Please, give it a try and let us know how it goes.

Regards,
Angélica

[Chris Santeramo]

Hello Angelica,

Thanks for the response and documentation links above.  I tried typing the formatting, outlined in the documentation linked above, directly into the description field but was unsuccessful.  I also tried pasting examples straight from the documentation into the description field but was also unsuccessful.  I've confirmed my project settings that description field is set to wiki renderer.

Keep in mind I'm trying to bulk import formatted text from a csv file generated in a spreadsheet.

The attachment below shows an attempt to paste   # heading level 1   directly from the documentation.  Also below is  **bold text**  copied directly from docs and pasted into the description field.  As you can see the actual result is bulleted text instead.

[Angélica Luz]

Thank for the information, Chris.

I tested here and faced the same issue, so I created a bug for our dev team to check:

• Formatted "markdown" text doesn't work on the new WYSIWYG editor

Please, click on “This affects my team” and also watch to receive updates.

[Sinartis Support]

Any news on that ? I'm having the same issue...

[Thomas Karlkvist]

On a side note to markdown syntax, if you export a query with pre-formatted syntax, this is correctly stored in the cell values of the spreadsheet when exported to excel (in cloud, this is).

Thus you can promptly setup templates for different description contents and “bulk import” e.g. an epic - story - subtask hierarchy (using Issue ID, Parent ID and project for new items that belong together, as needed)

You do need a system admin thought, to run the import.

My favourite way is setting up a customised REST-API tool and access through a sys admin account, thus circumventing this limitation to allowing standard users to perform  imports