Bulk Editor for Azure DevOps

Edit hundreds of work items in a spreadsheet grid, right in Azure DevOps.

Bulk Editor is the browser-based alternative to Open in Excel, for anyone who edits many work items at once: no Office add-in, no Visual Studio, and it works on Windows, Mac and Linux.

• Give every row its own value in one pass, instead of the same value on every selected item.
• Catch mistakes before they are saved: your own process rules are checked while you type.
• Move data in and out of Excel without losing your formatting.
• Clean up the tags in your project, which Azure DevOps itself cannot do.

Every organization starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no credit card. One price per organization, for any number of users.

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.
• Paste a block copied from Excel in one go.
• Undo and Redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y). Changes are highlighted, and nothing is saved until you select Publish.

The grid with edited cells, a filter row and a people search for Assigned To.

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.
• 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.
• 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.

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

$12 per organization per month or $120 per year, for all projects and any number of users. 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.
• Made in the Netherlands (EU). See the privacy policy.

Supported

• Azure DevOps Services (cloud). Azure DevOps Server (on-premises) is planned: email us with your server version to join the early access.
• Up to 5,000 work items per grid. Queries can span several projects; 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.
• 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'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

Support

Questions get an answer from the developer within 2 business days: support@jr-devtools.com or the Q&A tab.

About

Made by an independent developer who uses Azure DevOps every day, also the maker of Merge Conflict Resolver, which resolves pull request merge conflicts in the browser.