This can be achieved by a manually triggered automation rule or via the Bulk Edit option which didn't exist when this ticket was first created:

Hello everybody. If I understand the issue here correctly, this is easily doable by just copying and pasting, using our spreadsheet app JXL: https://jxl.app

• Install JXL in your Jira site
• Create a sheet inside Jira with all the issues you want to change (you can write JQL for this, it can span multiple projects)
• Add the all the desired fields (table columns) to the sheet
• Edit, mark and copy (⌘/Ctrl + C) a cell with the desired field value
• Mark multiple cells and paste (⌘/Ctrl + V) the copied value into them
• JXL takes care of the bulk change for you instantly

Hope that helps. It works with hundreds or thousands of issues.

Disclaimer: I'm co-founder of the app vendor behind JXL. Your feedback is welcome and much appreciated. There's a free fully functional trial available on the Atlassian Marketplace here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/1224710 (check out the short demo video)

My problem is similar, but not explicitly stated here. I use Agile boards heavily and often use JQL filters to display tickets across multiple projects (e.g. One corporate initiative has tickets in several Jira projects and the sponsor wants one Agile board to look at, not 10). The problem I have is that there is no reasonable way to include sub-tasks, from multiple projects, in you Agile Work Board.

Example:

• Project A has a sprint that includes tickets relevant only to the team (e.g. code refactoring) AND to a corporate initiative (e.g. deliver dependency A to team Z)
• Project B has the same situation

There is no JQL that I can use to create an Agile Board that displays the sub-tasks relevant to the corporate initiative in both projects. If I use "project in (Project A, Project B)" I get the refactoring tickets. If I use "fixversion = 'Corporate Initiative'", I don't get sub-tasks because they don't inherit the FixVersion of the parent when you drag-n-drop on the Agile Plan Board. And I can't use "Epic Link" in my JQL because you can only set one Epic per ticket and I can't force teams to put all Corporate Initiative tickets into a single Epic or they lose a lot of value from setting their own epics.

So what to do?? I can't think of any reason why a sub-task would not inherit the FixVersion from it's parent when it is dragged onto a version in the Agile Plan Board. It would be a gross violation of Scrum principles to say that the parent is being planned into a release, but the sub-tasks are in a different release.

so... how many more decades to wait for this super basic feature ?

What you want to do is possible with the "Bulk Change Issues" feature on a search. I'll do the "Fix Version" example which I do all the time.

• open a "search" on the issues that you want to change
  • usually this involves clicking on the "Fix Version" and getting a list
• under "Tools" select "Bulk Change: all ( n ) issues"
• check the boxes of the issues that you want to edit the fix version, click Next
• choose "Edit" from the next page, click Next
• edit the "Fix Version"
• finish the wizard.

This works for pretty much any field. I have even done this with a disparate set of JIRA issue numbers using JQL search as follows:

id in (PROJECTA-563, PROJECTB-436)

the issue was report 2006 - unbelievable that this is not implemented yet! I dont want to use a script or a plugin for this basic functionality.

https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/124677/howto-bulk-edit-change-all-subtasks

The script there might be working.

You may want to consider the JJUPIN plugin that introduces a Simple Issue Language

The following example describes a the post function of "Start progress" transition (and leads the main task to status: In Progress) that also leads all subtasks to In Progress:
http://confluence.kepler-rominfo.com/display/JJUP20/Recipe+-+Autotransitioning+subtasks

You may perform any transition to the subtasks or set specific custom fields.

Give it a try and download it from here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.keplerrominfo.jira.plugins.jjupin
or from here http://jira-plugins.kepler-rominfo.com/x/product/id/3

We are using 4.2.2. One can find sub tasks easily doing "issuetype in subTaskIssueTypes() and parent = KEY-X" but not being able to move with a bulk edit is a pain. It sounds like there is no plugin solution to bulk edit move sub tasks to a new parent for 4.2.2 ?

I created a plugin that adds a new Parent Issue Key calculated field, that lets you enter a Parent Issue Key in a Filter, and retrieves all the Sub-Tasks for that parent issue. The results are in the Issue Navigator, so you can then perform a Bulk Edit on the Sub-Tasks.

I also modified the .jsp file that displays the Sub-Task Table in a parent issue, and added a link to open all the Sub-Tasks in the Issue Navigator.

We're still on 3.13.5, so not sure if 4.x already solves this. If there is still enough interest in this solution for 3.13.5, I'll look into posting to the plugin repository.

-Cory