Bulk Editor for Azure DevOps

Open in Excel, but in the browser. Edit hundreds of work items in a spreadsheet grid, right in Azure DevOps, on Windows, Mac or Linux. No Office add-in, no Visual Studio, and your own process rules are checked before anything is saved.

Clean up your tags. Rename, merge and delete tags, which Azure DevOps itself can't do.

• Give every row its own value in one pass, instead of the same value on every selected item.
• Work like in Excel: select a block, fill it down with Ctrl+D and see its sum, while parents add up the Story Points of their children.
• Move data in and out of Excel without losing your formatting, test case steps included.

Every organization starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no credit card. After that: a free plan, or Pro from $120 per organization per year (or $12 per month).

Nothing to set up: it runs in your browser and your work items stay in Azure DevOps. Not an organization admin? Install it from this page anyway: Azure DevOps sends your admin a request.

Edit with the keyboard, paste from Excel, publish only what changed, then clean up your tags.

Edit like a spreadsheet

• Click a cell and type, or move with the arrow keys, Home/End, Ctrl+Home/End and PageUp/PageDown, like in Excel.
• Enter or F2 edits the active cell, Esc cancels, Delete clears it, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V copy and paste on it.
• Select several cells (New) with Shift+arrows, Shift+click or by dragging (Ctrl+A selects everything). The status line shows the count, sum and average. Ctrl+D or the fill handle copies the top cell down, Delete clears the whole selection, and Ctrl+C copies it as a block.
• Paste a block copied from Excel in one go, or one value into a whole selection.
• Rollups in the tree (New): next to its own value, a parent shows the sum (Σ) of its children's Story Points, Remaining Work, Effort and other estimates in the grid, updated as you edit. Switch it off with Σ Rollups.
• Undo and Redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y). Changes are highlighted, and nothing is saved until you select Publish.

Select a block to see its count, sum and average; parents show the sum of their children.

Validated before you publish, nothing gets overwritten

• Pick lists, required fields, states, and area and iteration paths come from your own process, including custom fields and inherited processes.
• People search for Assigned To, and tags chosen from those already used in your project.
• Queries across projects (New): a query without a project filter opens in one grid. Every row is checked against the rules, states and area and iteration paths of its own project, and is published to that project.
• If someone changed a work item since you opened it, that row is refused and your edit is kept. Every other error is shown on its row, with the reason.

Errors per row: a process rule and an invalid number.

Excel round trip

• Export to .xlsx with clean text (no HTML tags), edit in Excel, import it back.
• Import matches columns by header, and only real changes are applied.
• Test case steps come out one row per step (Test Step, Step Action, Step Expected), the same layout as the Azure Test Plans export, and go back in the same way.
• Descriptions with bold text, links, lists or images are never flattened; the grid leaves them to the work item form.

Paste a block copied from Excel.

Test case steps (New)

• Test cases get a Steps column ("5 steps"). Open it to read the steps in a table of action and expected result.
• On Pro you can add, remove, move and change steps, and publish them with the rest of your edits.
• Steps with formatting (bold, lists, images) and shared steps are shown but never rewritten, and the ids of the steps stay the same, so attachments on steps keep pointing at the right step.

The steps of a test case: add, move and change them, then publish with your other edits.

Clean up your tags

• A Tags page under Boards lists every tag in the project with its number of work items, with search, sort and an "unused only" filter.
• On Pro you can rename, merge and delete tags. Merging updates the work items as normal revisions.
• Azure DevOps can't rename or delete tags in the web UI. Tags are shared with pull request labels, so those change too.

Every tag with its number of work items; select two and merge them in one go.

Hierarchy, sort and filter

• Tree queries show as a collapsible tree.
• Add child work items and change parents.
• Sort and filter any column.

New child work items added in a tree query.

Free and Pro

Pro starts at $120 per organization per year, or $12 per month (Pro Team, up to 25 users); Pro Business and Pro Enterprise tiers for larger organizations. See the Pricing tab. Applies to all projects. The free limit counts different work items: changing the same item again that month doesn't count twice.

The 14-day Pro trial starts automatically. After the trial you continue on Free; nothing is lost. Invoices are sent by Lemon Squeezy (Merchant of Record). Purchase orders or several organizations on one invoice: email support@jr-devtools.com.

An organization admin enters the license key under Organization settings → Extensions → Bulk Editor.

How it compares

How it works

1. An organization admin (Project Collection Administrator) installs the extension.
2. On the Queries page, open the ⋮ menu above the results and select Open in Bulk Editor. Or select work items in a backlog or query and choose Open in Bulk Editor from the context menu. You can also open Boards → Bulk Editor and run a WIQL query.
3. Edit, review the highlighted changes, and select Publish.

Works in the dark theme too.

Permissions and security

• Permissions: work items read & write only (vso.work_write). No access to code, builds or pipelines.
• Your permissions apply: people can only change what they're allowed to change in Azure DevOps; area path and field rules are enforced by Azure DevOps itself. Renaming and deleting tags needs the "Delete tag definition" permission, which Project Administrators have by default.
• Full audit trail: every change is a normal work item revision, in the name of the person who published it.
• Your data stays in Azure DevOps: the extension runs in your browser and talks only to your organization's REST API. Excel files are created and read in your browser. There is no server of ours and no telemetry. The only external call is the license check with Lemon Squeezy (about once a week), which sends the license key and your organization name and ID, never work item data.
• See the privacy policy.

Supported

• Azure DevOps Services (cloud) and Azure DevOps Server 2022 and newer (on-premises), including Express. On Server a license covers one project collection; see Azure DevOps Server for how to install.
• Up to 5,000 work items per grid. Queries can span several projects (each row follows the rules of its own project); new work items are created in the project you opened the Bulk Editor from.
• Formatted rich text is read-only in the grid. Plain descriptions can be edited.
• State changes follow your process rules. A transition your process doesn't allow is refused by Azure DevOps and shown on that row.
• Test case steps are edited as plain text. A step with formatting, and a shared steps reference, can be read but not changed here; edit those in the work item form. Attachments on steps are not shown.
• Rollups add up the children that are in the grid, as the query returns them. The Excel export contains the field values only, not the sums.
• Links other than parent/child (related, predecessor/successor, …) are not edited in the grid.

FAQ

Azure DevOps can already edit several work items at once. Why this? The built-in bulk edit sets the same value on every selected work item. The grid lets every row have its own value: re-estimate a sprint, reassign a backlog or rename twenty items in one pass, or paste a whole column from Excel, and review everything before you publish.

Who can use it? Anyone who can edit work items in Azure DevOps. What someone may change is decided by Azure DevOps, exactly as in the work item form.

What happens with a mistake in a bulk change? Before publishing: Undo, or Discard. After publishing: every change is a normal revision, visible in the work item history.

What if JR DevTools stops? Your work items and settings live in Azure DevOps, so there is nothing to migrate. If development ever stops, the extension will be made open source and handed over to another maintainer, so your team can keep using it.

What's new in 1.3

• Select several cells like in Excel: Shift+arrows, Shift+click or dragging, with Ctrl+D, a fill handle, and the count, sum and average in the status line.
• Rollups in the tree: parents show the sum of their children's Story Points and work, live while you edit.
• Test case steps: read and edit them in a table (editing with Pro), and export and import them one row per step.
• Queries across projects: every row is checked against, and published to, its own project.

What's new in 1.2

• Azure DevOps Server 2022 and newer (on-premises) is supported, with the same extension and the same license tiers per project collection.

What's new in 1.1

• Keyboard navigation like Excel: an active cell that moves with the arrow keys, Home/End and PageUp/PageDown.
• Redo: Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z, and a Redo button next to Undo.
• Tags page: see, search and sort every tag, and rename, merge or delete them on Pro.

Release notes

Guides

• How to edit multiple work items at once in Azure DevOps
• How to bulk edit Azure DevOps work items without Excel
• Azure DevOps Excel add-in not working: fixes for the Team tab and TF80012
• Azure DevOps work items in Excel on a Mac

Support

Questions get an answer from the developer within 2 business days: support@jr-devtools.com or the Q&A tab. Bug reports and feature requests: GitHub issues.

About

Built and supported by Jeroen Reinink, a developer in the Netherlands (EU) who uses Azure DevOps every day, also the maker of Merge Conflict Resolver, which resolves pull request merge conflicts in the browser. Questions are answered by the developer within 2 business days.