Keep a notes column next to Jira issues after refresh

You import a Jira filter into Google Sheets with Jira Cloud for Sheets and type notes in the next column. After the next refresh the notes sit beside the wrong issues. People have asked about this in the Atlassian Community since at least 2020: “those notes will not line up with their corresponding ticket” (Atlassian Community).

Why it happens

A refresh writes the filter’s current result over the same cells, top to bottom. Your extra column is left alone, but the rows under it change: a new issue pushes the others down, a closed issue pulls them up, a new sort order moves them around. The note stays in row 12; the issue that was in row 12 doesn’t. Atlassian’s support answers call the overwrite expected behaviour.

The do-it-yourself fix: a notes tab with XLOOKUP

Keep the add-on’s data on one tab and your notes on another, joined by the issue key.

Let the add-on write to a tab called Jira data, with the issue key in column A.
Make a second tab, Notes. Type the issue keys in column A by hand, and your notes in the last column.
Pull the Jira fields in by key. For the summary in column B of Notes, with the summary in column B of Jira data:
```
=XLOOKUP($A2, 'Jira data'!$A:$A, 'Jira data'!B:B, "not in filter")
```
Copy it across for each field and down for each row.

Because each note sits in the same row as a key you typed, sorting and refreshing no longer move it.

Where the fix falls short

New issues don’t appear by themselves. A key must be typed into the Notes tab before its row exists. If you generate the key list with a formula instead, the misalignment comes back, because typed notes don’t move with formula rows.
Issues that leave the filter show “not in filter” (or #N/A with VLOOKUP) until someone cleans up.
Column numbers in VLOOKUP break when a field is added to the query. XLOOKUP by column, as above, is safer.
It still depends on the scheduled refresh, which can stop without warning (see Scheduled refresh not working).

If you’d rather not maintain it

Our app, Jira → Google Sheets, does this for you: every row is tied to its issue key, new issues are added at the bottom, issues that leave the filter are marked with the date, and nothing to the right of the app’s columns is ever written. If an update can’t run, the person who set it up gets an email.