Stop old Project Key turning text into a link

[Todd Palermo]

We are moving an old database to Jira where we had a control number that begins with PPH, so we created a new project in Jira and gave it the Key PPH. We added a text field in Jira to put the old control number in on imported issue like PPH-123, but Jira turns this into a link to the current project. We decided that this was confusing and changed the Jira Key to something else, but Jira still matches the text in a text field with a project Key that no longer exist.

Is there any way to update Jira that there isn't a PPH key project anymore?

[Todd Palermo · Accepted solution]

Looks like I have found the answer here: Editing a project key | Administering Jira applications Data Center and Server 8.5 | Atlassian Documentation

• The old project key can be used in JQL queries — Users won't have to update issue filters that reference the old project key.
• You won't be able to create a new project with the old project key. However, you can change the renamed project back to the old project key. If you delete the project, all associated keys will be freed and you'll be able to re-use them.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The only way to do that on Server, is I think, hack the text renderer code to stop the text fields doing it.

[Todd Palermo]

I don't want to stop this feature, but I wasn't expecting it to link to an old Project name. You see the link in the Text field is PPH-7755, but the URL is to PPHDEV-7744. We changed the Project Name from PPH to PPHDEV, but Jira is still linking even if the name doesn't match. There must be a way to stop this, right?