JIRA Issue numbers when moving between projects

[Cory Brassinton]

Two questions: If I have an existing project and create a new empty project, then bulk move some issues from the old project, will they keep their issue numbers if possible? Eg. OLD-123 -> NEW-123, or would it be OLD-123 -> NEW-1

Also, if I change the project key OLD -> NEW, will the issue numbers stay the same?

[Mike Sorensen · Accepted solution]

This is an easy test you could run with little consequences. However, I've done this and can tell you.

A: You'll get OLD-123 -> NEW-1 but OLD-123 will still be valid for hunting purposes. If you ask for OLD-123 you'll be redirected to NEW-1.

B: I've never changed a project key and can't answer that question. I expect the issue numbers to be the same. If you have Admin rights this is also an easy experiment where you simply erase the old projects and everything is fresh.

[Carolyn Nelson]

It didn't work like this for me, but 3 years have passed since this question/answer.  We are in the cloud.  I'm separating one project into two.  After creating the brand new project, I tested the move of 5 issues to the new project.  They had very high numbers and they weren't sequential, so OLD-34100 and OLD-35200, they came into the new project as NEW-34100 and NEW-34101.  Ugh!  Now I seem to have lost the ability to use numbers 1-34099.  Even if I create a net new ticket, it gets assigned NEW-34102.  Is this a function of the Issue ID field (as opposed to the Key)?  I am willing to make a whole new copy of the project to fix this before moving all the issues over.  Is there something I can do during the move to make sure the numbering starts at 1?