Marking a Duplicate

This page shows how to mark one issue as a duplicate of another in Google Issue Tracker. When you mark an issue as a duplicate, its status is changed to Duplicate and it is considered closed.

You must have Edit Issues permissions for the components that contain both issues in order to mark an issue as a duplicate of another.

Marking an issue as duplicate

When you mark an issue as duplicate, you indicate that the content of the issue is reported in another issue, called the canonical issue. The canonical issue may be chosen because it's older, has more visibility, or encompasses a larger scope when compared to the duplicate issue. You can mark an issue as duplicate either on that issue's page or in a search results page (using a bulk edit). However, you cannot mark an issue as duplicate from the canonical issue's page.

When you mark an issue as duplicate, it is considered closed and given a status of Duplicate. The Reporter, Assignee, Verifier, and any users or groups in the Collaborators and CC lists are added to the CC list of the canonical issue. The duplicate issue appears in the Duplicates drop-down tab of the canonical issue. Last, the duplicate issue's page gains a yellow bar near the top indicating the duplicate status. You can hover over the link in the yellow bar or in the status field to display a Hovercard for the canonical issue.

Information for an issue marked as duplicate is found in the Duplicates drop-down tab in the Related Issues tray on the details page of the canonical issue.

The number of duplicate issues that a canonical issue has is displayed in parenthesis within the Duplicates tab's title. Clicking on the tab displays a list of issues that are marked as duplicate of the canonical issue. Each issue entry in this list has two parts:

  • Issue ID: Hover over the issue ID to display the Hovercard for the issue.
  • Issue Title: Click on the title to open the issue's page in a new tab.

Mark an issue as a duplicate

To mark an issue as a duplicate of another:

  1. Open the issue.

  2. In the App Bar near the top of the page, click Mark as Duplicate.

  3. In the text field that appears, you have two options. You can search for the canonical issue (the issue you want to remain active) by typing a search query. Alternatively, you can enter the issue id.

  4. If you searched for the canonical issue, select it from the search results.

  5. Click Apply.

    Issue Tracker notifies you that the issue has been marked as a duplicate. For example:

    Canonical Issue ID set to "19596671", Status set to "Duplicate".

    A yellow bar appears below the App Bar and indicates that the issue has been marked as a duplicate of another issue.

Unmarking an issue as duplicate

An issue can be unmarked as duplicate in several ways:

  • Click the Unmark as Duplicate button in the App Bar.
  • Click, the Re-open link beneath the status field.
  • Change the status of the issue.

Note that an issue cannot be unmarked as duplicate from the canonical issue page.

If you click Unmark as Duplicate or Re-open, the status for the issue becomes either New (if there is no Assignee) or Open (if there is an Assignee).

Once unmarked, the issue no longer appears in the canonical issue's Duplicates drop-down tab. However, people that were automatically added to the CC for the canonical issue remain on that list unless explicitly removed.

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