Updating work items with new or modified attributes

After you update a work item type to include new or modified attributes, you must manually update existing work items to synchronize attributes.

To manually update existing work items with new or modified attributes:

1. Run a query with query results that contain all the work items that you want to update.
   Note: Do not select any relationships to be shown in the query results. If relationships are shown, the Type icon is not displayed and you cannot complete these steps. To clear all relationships that are shown, in the Work Items view menu, select Relationships, click Deselect all, and then click OK.
2. In the Work Items view, select the work items that you want to modify.
3. In the row of one of the selected work items, right-click the Type icon and select Synchronize attributes.
   Note: Synchronize Attributes is intended only to add missing attributes, not to remove no longer needed attributes. This is to enure that you do not lose any information if you change your mind and change the type back to the one that required those attributes.
4. Create a query that returns the work items that require a value for the synchronized attributes.
   Note: Attribute synchronization sets new attributes to their default value. To set multiple attributes to any other value, use bulk edit in the query result editor.