Hi david.stallard1567241156, 

To our best knowledge, Microsoft is capable of handling xls files which contain HTML content. Apparently I can find this in their update From August 9, 2016:

Issue recap:

The Excel team has made a change in the behavior of certain file types to increase security. This change came in the security updates KB3115262, KB3170008, and KB3115322. Previously, when you tried to open an HTML, XLA, or XLAM file with an .XLS file extension from an untrusted location, Excel would warn about the mismatch between the file extension and content, but would still open the workbook without Protected View security. After the security updates Excel no longer will open the workbook because these files are not compatible with Protected View and there is no warning or other indication it was not opened.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/d2d84793-9920-45e3-baef-5027a4ac1ae0/kb3170008-for-office-2016-breaks-functionality-ms16088

Whereas, mentioned in the article security update kb3115438, contain this piece of information:

Excel 2016 silently blocks the loading of untrusted HTML files. This issue occurs after you install MS16-088: Description of the security update for Excel 2016: July 12, 2016 (KB3115272). After you install this new update, Excel 2016 will open HTML documents (even if they're renamed as .xls files) in protected view instead of silently failing.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3115438/august-9-2016-update-for-excel-2016-kb3115438

If you would like to find more details on the security - I'd recommend reaching out to Microsoft community and support directly.
Meanwhile, the Team acknowledges limitations of our solution and we've provided detailed insights and alternatives on how to export Jira issues to excel in the Current Status.

I'm hoping this information would help you to address exporting issues.

Cheers,
Ignat Alexeyenko
Jira Bugmaster.

According to the Jira 7.2 release notes, the Excel exporter was removed due to a Microsoft security update which made it so these files could no longer be opened:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjira/jira-platform-releases/jira-7-2-x-platform-release-notes#JIRA7.2.xplatformreleasenotes-csvCSVexporter(replacestheExcelHTMLexporter)

Is this no longer a concern, since you've given us a solution to re-enable it?

Confirmed that the excel.enabled property also works in Jira 7.10.2.

How to make Jira export .xls file instead of .html file

Confirmed, this is working in JIRA7.6 Server, i just tested it.

But; This is no real XLS File, it is a HTML with a .XLS-file Suffix. And 

xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"

In the Header..

Quite the same as saving it as HTML. Only advantage i see is the XLS file-association that you can open it in Excel just double clicking on it...

Hi everyone,

I've resolved the the current issue as Not a Bug and put detailed description on suggested approach to get Excel export working in the Current Status field of the issue.

Cheers,
Ignat Alexeyenko
Jira Bugmaster.

Any progress on getting this fixed?

Hi joerg.geraldy

In JIRA 7.4 HTML export option was added (link to release notes). It should be much easier to open this type of export in Microsoft Excel.

Cheers

Hello,

we have the same issues with the new CSV Export - MS Excel Import. 

To have a Excel-export is business-critical for us too.

We need a CSV-export with the possibility to set flexibly the value of the field-separator like e.g. ";"

For us this issue is an very critical issue.

Bye and best regards

Jörg Geraldy

You may want to try the Better Excel Plugin, which avoid all separator-related or encoding problems by exporting native binary XLSX files (not CSV). See this comparison.

Is there any progress? I see the issue is unassigned
I assume the advice from Roger Oberg is suitable only for JIRA Server not JIRA Cloud, am I right?

Any advice for JIRA cloud users?

@Dominik: its possible to enable the old Excel exports again ( at least in 7.2.x versions of jira)

Stop JIRA instance
Navigate to $jirahome folder
Create jira-config.properties file if the file is not available in your $jirahome
Add jira.export.excel.enabled=true and save the file
Restart JIRA and test using excel export feature.

Hello,

we have the same issues with the new CSV Export - MS Excel Import. 

I thought that it was commonly known that there are several locale dependent issues with importing CSV to MS Excel. The only way to import CSV to Excel seems to be  UTF-16LE with BOM and tab separation. JIRA Export uses UTF-8 with commas - which cannot be imported and all special characters (in our case Umlauts) are broken as well.

For us it is an urgent issue since we have the version in production an Excel exports are Business Critical.

BR,
Dominik Schmelz

Hi,

Thank you for your advices.

The result is:

1. Doesn't work for me, no matter which text editor I use.
2. This works but it's very user unfriendly.
3. Unreachable way. We are in banking environment where users don't have enough permissions to adjust regional settings.

What has changed since the export from JIRA to excel was without any problems? It used to work fine. Couldn't you add option "Export to Excel" back next to "Export to CSV" instead of changing CSV export?

I am very afraid of this issue because our management won't allow us to migrate from previous ticket tool to JIRA if they couldn't export issues to excel in the most convenient way such as one click. We are organization with potential of 1000+ users.

Thanks

jan.zahradka1759805967,

I've tested the import in Excel 2016. I was able to reproduce the problem, but it looks like the behaviour of opening *.cvs depends on region and list separator you've got set in you operating system.

Yet I found a way to open the data correctly (worked on MacOS):

• Open *.csv file in text editor
• Copy it's content to clipboard
• In Excel:
  • "File" -> "New Workbook" (or just select an cell in existing workbook)
  • "Edit" -> "Paste Special..."
  • Choose: "As:" -> "Text"
  • Click "OK"

If you want to see all lines of multi-line cell you will need to change it's format by:
"Format" -> "Calls..." -> "Alignment" tab -> "Text control:" -> check "Wrap text"

There is also an "File->Import..." option in Excel where you can specify separator, but it can't recognise CSV (RFC 4180) format correctly. It doesn't recognise multi-line quote escaped text for some reason.

I will try to figure out what we, as JIRA Dev team, can do about this.

As for now I propose following workarounds:

1. Use "Paste Special..." option
2. Use different application to export to *.xlsx (e.g. LibreOffice or Google Spreadsheets)
3. Change region and list separator in system. -> http://superuser.com/a/606274
   This unfortunately doesn't recognise UTF-8 encoding by default when opening by double-click.

Let me know if any of above worked for you.

I hope we can find a good solution,
Przemysław Czuj
JIRA Developer

Hi, i tried to open CSV by double-click or open it from excel menu File -> Open. That doesn't work. There is both structure and the encoding wrong.

Then i tried to open CSV in text editor, copy all content, open Excel and paste it into A1 position. The encoding is correct but not the structure. The end-of-line character makes problem, I think.

I confirm that I am able to open it correctly in Google Docs by menu File -> Open. Copy to A1 position doesn't work because of the same reason as in Excel.

Hello jan.zahradka1759805967,

Thank you for your feedback and for the exported data files.
Could you please provide your steps taken to import CSV into Excel? The *.csv files you provided are correctly encoded and I had no problem in importing them into ether Libre Office or Google Spreadsheets. I currently don't have access to Excel, I will check that later if needed, but anyway if other software has no problem importing it, maybe there is some problem in some Excel patch version with understanding CSV format.

Cheers,
Przemysław Czuj
JIRA Developer

I attached export file: Smart Banka - Backlog (JIRA).csv and preview of translated excel file Broken export MS Excel 2016.xlsx. Hope it could help with investigation of the problem. Because this prevents us to do some advance data transformation in Excel. It could be show stopper for JIRA in our organization.

Thank you rob.dudewicz1541739408 and chris.demattio for your responses.

I created JRA-63747 to track your suggestion.

Cheers,
Przemysław Czuj
JIRA Developer

My issue is with multi-select fields as well. If users have selected multiple values in a multi-select field, the values will be exported as a comma separated list. This will cause Excel to create multiple columns when importing, one for each entry in the field.

Hi,  I just tested some text fields (short text and free text) which had a comma in the actual field value.  And it is working correctly as mentioned in the prior comment.  I was able to open the CSV export directly in Excel and formatting is correct.  I also did look inside the csv and indeed it is formatted as mentioned above - esacped within quotes.  I'm using Excel 2016 (Office 365 ProPlus)

I think part of my confusion may be a different issue, not regarding text fields.  I've found a problem with commas and multi-selection fields.  I will enter it as a separate ticket, because I don't see it entered now as one of the issues related to JRA-62115

I wasn't allowed to enter a ticket, so I put the details into a comment on JRA-62115

Hello everyone,

The issue is being investigated right now, but by following issue description I couldn't notice any errors in *.csv file exported from JIRA. The file has proper format with commas (,) escaped within quotes ("").
The file without any problems can be imported back to JIRA or can be viewed in CSV supporting tools such as Google Spreadsheets.

I would like to ask anyone who is experiencing this bug to specify what are the symptoms of breakage of the exported *.csv.
Could the issue be related only to importing into Microsoft Excel? If so, what version of Microsoft Office is used when the problem occurs and what are steps taken to import the *.csv?

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

Cheers,
Przemysław Czuj
JIRA Developer

I think which version of MS Office is installed depends as well. 
I tried doing the export on Excel 2007 and it broke the format. 
Then I tried the same thing with Excel 2010, it didn't break the format but still there were alot of room for improvement. 

Hi, I agree with above comments, the csv exporter is quite lacking compared to the prior Excel exporter.  I really can't understand why it was removed.  Another annoying difference is that each custom field is named as "Custom field (ABC)" whereas in prior Excel export the field was simply "ABC".  Not a big deal - but makes my Excel columns bigger with useless text of "Custom field..." at the front. 

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback, but I know how to transform text to columns,
The issue is in the csv generation.

Try to export a csv with an issue like with

• summary = Error with a,b,c
• Description = Hello, I see an issue with a,b,c.
  The csv will be corrupted, you will not get back the good field in excel.
  I can't ask to all users to not use , in any field.

The csv generator should avoid to consider , in field as delimiter.

Try following workaround:

1) export csv file

2) open it in text editor (e.g. notepad)

3) copy all content (ctrl+a -> ctrl+c)

4) open new excel sheet

5) paste the content in A1 field. Excel transforms it into correct table.

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback.

I will try jira.export.excel.enabled=true with 7.2.2

But for separator, if the separator is used by example in summary, that will break the csv.

Both , or ; could be used in summary.

You can re-activate Excel in your jira-config.properties with following line:

jira.export.excel.enabled=true

(This works for JIRA Core 7.2.2 and 7.2.3)

Alternatively you can set your Region to US (atleast for excel 2015 only US works!!!) and configure the list separator to comma. Then Excel export/import in Excel will work again.

Alternative 2: Save the csv file and add "sep=," as the first line in the file. When opening the file in excel the comma will be used as a delimiter so the import works again

Assume the last Tab delimiter comment is for the generation of the file by JIRA, Because if the CSV is created (as is now) and it is opened with only TAB as the delimiter, then no fields are separated into columns (when opened in Excel or Open Office).

A (temporary) quickfix could be to make TAB the default delimiter which reduces the chances of causing problems.