What happens when a custom text field is changed to a select list

[Kimi Nakashima]

I have inherited an existing JSD and it's a bit of a mess. Some of the custom fields were just made into text fields to save time. Basically they didn't have the time to gather all the options and enter them in. As most of you probably know, if you give a customer a blank text field to fill out you can count on at least one person filling it out wrong. I want to go in and change the ones that have exact options so that I don't have to deal with, for example, someone putting in a request for a 1.7TB external hard drive. Yes, I'm smart enough to figure out what they need, but for accounting purposes I want the ticket to reflect what they're getting.

But I want to know what might happen to all my existing tickets if I replace the existing text field with a select list. Is it best to do the following so I don't lose any data:

1) Create new custom field as a select list and add to issue

2) Edit existing issues so that the new select field is filled out properly

3) Delete old custom text field

[Matt Doar · Accepted solution]

If you're in Cloud then yes. If you have DB access you can follow https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/change-custom-field-types-in-jira-server-158357.html

[Kimi Nakashima]

I am in cloud and I suspected that I was on the right track. Thanks for the confirmation @Matt Doar