Can I change the workflow of a specific issue that already exists?

[Alexis Evans]

I changed the workflow used for a certain issue type, and it seems like that just makes it so future issues of that type will use the new workflow.

That's part of what I wanted to do, but I want to also switch existing issues of that type over to the new workflow. Is this possible?

[Mikael Sandberg · Accepted solution]

Changing the workflow will affect all issues that is associated with that workflow, it will not just apply to future issues. 

[Alexis Evans]

Okay, that's what I would have thought. But I changed the workflow, and the existing ones still looked like they were on the old workflow. Is there something I need to do to get it to change over?

[Mikael Sandberg]

On rare occasions that happens and in that case you need to make a copy of your workflow and then re-apply it to the workflow scheme and that should solve the problem. 

[Alexis Evans · Accepted solution]

In addition to the other answer above, I found another reason why it wasn't originally working for me. I made the change within the project itself, but I also had to go over to the workflow scheme and edit it there. For any statuses that didn't match up between the old and new workflows, it had me choose what status to set issues with certain statuses to. Jira handled the transition really well and all of the issues went to the correct statuses. It's just a matter of finding where to change it first.