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Exporting to Excel

You can download the structure that you see on the screen as an XLS file and open it in Microsoft Excel or in other applications that support this format.

To export the structure to XLS, click the Export button in the toolbar and select Export to Excel.

The browser will download a new XLS file, which you can save or open. The XLS file will:

  • Contain all the issues that are present in the structure.

  • Preserve the structure's hierarchy.

  • Include the same columns as the structure.

  • Display only the Summary field within the Summary column. To include the issue description, add a separate Description column to the structure before exporting.

Row Groups

The rows are grouped together using Excel's grouping feature to form a collapsible structure in the spreadsheet – you can expand and collapse sub-issues under their parent issues.

The maximum depth of grouping in an XLS file is 8. If you have a deeper structure, it will still be exported, but the grouping will only work for the top 8 levels.

The structure hierarchy is also visualized using indentation in the Summary column, where up to 15 levels can be displayed.

Printing

The XLS file is set up for a standard printing configuration:

  • Page orientation is Landscape.

  • The content is fit horizontally on the page (you might need to change that if you have too many columns or large content).

  • Paper size is set to Letter if your account locale is US or Canada; otherwise it is set to A4.

It's a good idea to use Print Preview before sending the document for printing. If you don't like how it looks, consider using Printable page.

Columns

The columns are formatted in the best way suitable for a spreadsheet.

Column Type

Notes

Column Type

Notes

Issue Key

The cell with an issue key is a link to the actual issue.

Summary

Cells in the Summary column have indentation just like in Structure. Note that if you change the format of a cell, you might lose the indentation level.

Progress

Progress field contains a fractional number from 0 to 1, formatted as a percent value.

Description, Environment and large text fields

The text might not fit in the column. You can increase the column size or use the Format Cells | Alignment | Wrap Text option in Excel to have a large text take up more than one line, increasing the row height. Note that a cell might not accommodate a very large text, and you might only see the first part of it.

Dates

Date values are displayed in your local date format.

Estimates, Time Spent

Duration fields contain actual numbers (fractional number of days), which you can sum or otherwise process. The display format is HH:MM, where HH is the number of hours and MM is the number of minutes. So an estimation of 5 days will be displayed as 40:00 (if you have 8-hour work days).



Tip: If you prefer to see this in Jira Duration format (e.g., 1w 3d 5h 20m), try our Excel Macro.

Standard custom fields

Standard custom fields are rendered according to their type.

Custom fields from other add-ons

Custom fields from other add-ons are displayed as they are rendered.

Compatibility

The exported file is compatible with Microsoft Excel 2003+.

Technical Limitations

The XLS format allows a maximum of 65536 rows in a spreadsheet. If your structure contains more items than this, use filtering to hide some of the issues.

If your structure's hierarchy is more than 15 levels deep, any items deeper than level 15 will be indented to the 15th level in the Summary column of the XLS file.

Note for Add-on Developers

If your plugin provides a new custom field type, please ensure that the field is displayed with the best compatibility with the other plugins, including Structure. In your column view velocity template, check for $displayParams.textOnly and/or $displayParams.excel_view and/or $displayParams.nolink – all those parameters will be set to true by Structure and may also be used by other plugins. See CommonVelocityKeys.java and Jira sources for examples



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