How do I change issue numbers when importing issues?

[Jack White]

I work for a small company which is moving from somewhat informal development into a more carefully managed regime.

Prior to this, I set up my own Jira account to manage my tasks on a particular project. The project name and issue numbers match my branch names. Now, the same project has been set up for use by my wider team, in a new company Jira instance. Unfortunately, a load of requirements issues have been added already, so there is a clash of issue numbers.

I would like to move the requirements issue numbers up above my code issues, because, frankly, this causes less of a problem in matching issues to code branches.

How can I change the requirements issue numbers?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You can't choose the key for issues when they are created or imported.  The import will behave as "create new issue" for each incoming issue, simply taking the next available number.

I'd recommend importing the current key into an "external key" field

[Jack White]

That seems like a glaring oversight on Atlassian's part.

If I export the requirements issues and then delete them in Jira, will the issue numbers be freed for reuse?

Alternatively, if I changed the project name, how can I free the original name for reuse?