How to Export Jira Projects to Microsoft Excel (2 Methods)

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Published in Use cases on 05/12/2022, last updated 21/04/2023.

Developers work in Jira, team leads work in Jira, and maybe even support specialists work in Jira. But the rest of the organization probably has their own tool they prefer, and that means someone has to jump back in forth between that tool and Jira. Or, if everyone’s in Jira, you’re struggling to build the reports your stakeholders want. Either way, you’re looking for a way to export Jira issues to excel. Creating that spreadsheet manually and copying the information in takes time you could be doing something more effective. So how can you get it done automatically?

There are two methods. One is exporting Jira issues as a CSV file. The other is using Unito.

First method: export Jira to Excel as a CSV

Jira has a lot of options for exporting issues to different formats, from HTML to RSS, Word, and, yes, a CSV file. That means you can potentially import that file into all sorts of databasing tools, from Excel to Sheets and Airtable. Here’s how it’s done.

First, you’ll want to go to your Jira project.

Then, click on Issues on the left. You’ll get a full list of all the issues that are part of this project. Click on Export issues, then on Export Excel CSV. Your CSV file will download automatically.

Now go to Excel.

Drag your CSV file into your Excel workspace.

And boom!

Just like that, you have all your Jira issues exported to Excel. Each column represents a field in Excel, from the issue number to the assignee and labels. From here, you can clean this up, use data visualization tools to turn it into a report, or send it off to anyone who needs it.

Limitations of this method

It’s pretty hard to beat this method as far as ease-of-use goes. Go to Jira, hit export, and put the CSV file in Excel. But does simplicity make for the best method? Well that depends on whether these are dealbreakers for you or not:

• Manual exports: The unfortunate thing about this sort of export is that it becomes outdated the minute you do it. That’s because work is still happening in Jira after you export your issues. If you want to reflect those updates, you’ll need to export your issues again.
• One-way exports: If you ever want to get data from Excel into Jira — or make it flow back and forth — this method won’t work for you.
• Cleanup is required: Look at that screenshot again. How’s someone used to Jira — or any other project management tool — supposed to make sense of that spreadsheet? Exporting Jira issues to Excel with this method isn’t a one-and-done process. You’ll need to clean up the result to get the most use out of it.

If you only need to do a direct export from Jira to Excel every so often, and you already have workflows in place to make that data presentable, then this method might work for you. But if you want a better method, read on.

Second method: export Jira projects to Excel with Unito

Unito is a no-code workflow management solution with some of the deepest two-way integrations for the most popular tools on the market, including Asana, Excel, Google Sheets, Jira, GitHub, and more. With a Unito flow, you can automatically export Jira issues to Excel, where they’ll be turned into rows. Then, whenever an issue is updated in Jira, you’ll see those updates in Microsoft Excel. No manual exporting required.

The best part? We built a template you can use to build automatic reports in Excel from data in Jira. Get the template here.

Here’s why Unito is the best way to export your Jira issues to Microsoft Excel:

• It’s automatic: Once you’ve set up a Unito flow between Jira and Excel, issues will be automatically exported to Excel as they’re created in Jira. No need to check in or run the automation yourself.
• It’s one-way and two-way: If you’re building reports in Excel, you can use Unito to send Jira issues to Excel. But if you want to automatically update Jira projects from Excel, you can do that with Unito, too. At the same time.
• It’s automatically cleaned up: When you build a Unito flow, you can decide how much data you want to export, where it lands, and what it’ll look like when it gets there.

And that’s it! Now just launch your flow and watch as your Jira issues are automatically exported to your Excel spreadsheet.