Excel file | Colined Help Center

This article lists several advantages that Pivot Report provides compared to Jira’s built-in Issue Navigator, especially for exporting work items within an Excel Workbook.

Why should you use Pivot Report to create an Excel file?

Jira’s Issue Navigator lacks a native export to Microsoft Excel. Instead, you can only export as CSV, Excel CSV, or through a Jira add-on. Additionally, exporting more than 1,000 work items at a time using the Issue Navigator’s export feature is unsupported by Atlassian, requiring a workaround for larger exports.

Pivot Report addresses these limitations by enabling you to export an Microsoft Excel workbook without additional configurations or add-ons.

This ensures you avoid formatting work items, eliminates the need to separate text into columns, and allows you to quickly explore, visualize, and share data.

For example, once a tab is downloaded into an Excel Workbook, you can analyze its contents, create custom charts, or embed a copy into presentation slides.

Features and use cases

Export contents from each report section

Summary section

The contents of the Summary section get exported depending on your selection of Rows, Columns, Values, and Function.

The Summary section of the Work item Structure tab displays the hierarchy among work items in the report. This hierarchy is maintained when exporting the contents of this tab into an Excel file.

Breakdown section

When the Breakdown section is enabled in the Pivot, Capacity, Worklogs, or Warnings tabs, only the columns you select are exported to an Excel workbook.

As shown in the example below, columns marked with a checkbox will be included in the export.

Progress and Slices sections

Progress indicators and Slices do not appear in the Workbook.

Display Excel Worksheets contents differently for specific tabs

Work item Structure

If you’ve exported a Workbook using the Work item Structure tab, the Worksheet mirrors its source in the Pivot Report, maintaining the tree view displayed in the tab, as shown in the screenshot below.

Additionally, in the Excel file, the Work item Key (T) and Work item Summary (Summary) columns are hyperlinked to your Jira instance, replicating their functionality in the report.

Warnings

If you are exporting from the Warnings tab and have enabled the Breakdown section, the first worksheet will contain the tab’s summary section.

Subsequent worksheets will display the contents of the Breakdown section, with each worksheet associated with an enabled warning and listing work items specific to that warning. The screenshot below shows these worksheets.

How can you export a report into an Excel Workbook?

To create an Excel Workbook for a specific tab, use one of the two options in the report’s Header section: the ‘Excel’ button or the ‘Excel’ option in the Export dropdown menu. To create a Workbook for a specific set of work items, use the ‘Excel’ button appearing in the Breakdown pop-up.

Unlike an HTML Snapshot, an Excel Workbook can only be generated from the header section and not from a Breakdown pop-up.

‘Excel’ button

Click on Excel in the header section of a selected tab, and access the resulting Excel Workbook for this tab.

‘Excel’ option in the dropdown menu

Click on the dropdown menu beside the ‘Excel’ ('Snapshot') button.
Select Excel in the menu, and access the downloaded Excel Workbook for this tab.

Breakdown pop-up

Click on Excel in the Breakdown pop-up, and access the downloaded Excel Workbook for this pop-up.

FAQ

How is the content exported in the Excel Workbook?

The exported Excel workbook is organized as follows:

First worksheet: Contains the Summary section of the selected tab.
Second worksheet: Contains the Breakdown section, if enabled.

Notes:

Tabs without a Breakdown section, such as Work item Structure, appear on a single worksheet.
The contents of the Breakdown pop-up are also included on a single worksheet.
The Charts tab cannot currently be exported.

How will the Workbook be named?

The Excel Workbook will include the name of the report, the tab used to create the workbook, and the time and date of its creation.

For example, if a user is working within the Work item Structure tab of the ‘Monthly Results’ report and clicks the Excel button in the header section on January 3, 2025, at 3:45 PM EST (15:45 EST), the downloaded file will be named: monthly-results-issues_structure-250103-1545.xlsx.

What values are omitted in the Workbook?

Function

Within a Pivot tab, there are five options for Function Values that appear within the Summary section.

Out of these options, if either Progress or 'Rate are used, only cases with at least one work item will display a value in the Excel Worksheet. All cases without any work items will contain empty cells.

Value Display

Within a Pivot and Worklogs tab, there are three options for Values Display that appear within the Summary section, when the Summation Function is used. Also, there is an option to hide or unhide the Work item Count.

Out of these options, if the Value | Percent is used, only the value portion will be exported into the Excel’s sheet, while the percentage will be omitted. Also, the option to hide Work item Count has no impact on the contents exported.

How will time-based values appear?

When you export a report, all time-based values are converted to hours. For example, 30 minutes appears as 0.5 hours.

For values expressed in days or weeks, the conversion follows the Global time tracking settings defined in your Jira instance. For example, if one day equals 8 hours and one week equals 40 hours in your settings, the exported report reflects those values.

Troubleshooting

Why is the Excel button not appearing?

The title of the button changes dynamically between Snapshot and Excel based on your selection in the dropdown menu.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 from the prior section to display the ‘Excel’ button in the header section.

Why is the Breakdown section not appearing?

The Breakdown section may not appear because it is not enabled in the report sidebar.

If you want it to appear:

Turn on the Breakdown section before exporting the tab. If it is disabled, it will not be included in the exported Excel file. In the screenshot below, the section is disabled.

Can you encounter errors while exporting?

Yes. You may encounter errors while exporting data to Excel from Pivot Report on Server/Data Center, as mentioned in a related article.

If you have questions or need assistance, contact our support team via email or service desk. Our team is available Monday through Friday (9:00 AM to 7:00 PM GMT+7) to help with technical challenges or discuss improvements.