Documentation for JIRA 4.4. Documentation for other versions of JIRA is available too.

In order to provide fast searching, JIRA creates an index of the text entered into issue fields. This index is stored on the file system, and updated whenever issue text is added or modified. It is sometimes necessary to regenerate this index manually; for instance if issues have been manually entered into the database, or the index has been lost or corrupted.

(warning) Some functionality described on this page is restricted in JIRA OnDemand.

Indexing Administration

  1. Log in as a user with the 'JIRA Administrators' global permission.
  2. Select 'Administration' > 'System' > 'Advanced' > 'Indexing' (tab) to open the 'Re-Indexing' page.
    (tick) Keyboard shortcut: 'g' + 'g' + type 'ind'
  3. This page allows you to:
    • re-index your data— whenever you re-index data, JIRA will clear any existing indexes and re-index all the current data from scratch. This may take a few minutes (depending on how many issues you have) and users will be unable to access JIRA during this time.
    • optimise your indexes — click the 'Optimise Indexes' link to access this function.
      • Note that JIRA schedules an optimisation of your indexes every night at midnight.

Screenshot: Indexing JIRA

(info) Choosing a custom Index Path:

  • If you upgraded JIRA with an XML backup from a JIRA version prior to 4.2 and used a custom directory for your index path, you can choose between using this custom directory (which cannot be edited) or the default directory for your index path location. However, once you switch to using the default directory, you can no longer choose the custom directory option.
  • The default directory location is the caches/indexes subdirectory of the JIRA Home Directory.



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