Transfer from a personal account to an org: what happens to projects

[maxxer]

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Hi.
We need to transfer a couple of repositories from a personal Pro account to an Org. We have a project in the original repo, what is going to happen to it? I understand this is not migrated along with the repo, but will it lose all issue references? Can we still use the existing project in the old account with the new repo?

To later migrate the project, I see there's gh-migrate-project, that should do.

[mateusloubach]

When transferring a repository from a personal account to an Organization on GitHub, the associated classic projects (if applicable) do not transfer with it. However, the impact depends on the type of project.

If the project was tied to the repo, it stays behind in your personal account, and all the issue/PR references inside it will break since the repo is now in a different location. If it was a user-level project, it still exists, but you can't link it to the new repo in the Org.

For those using the new GitHub Projects (beta), the issues will remain, but you'll likely need to manually re-associate them with the new repo.

Workarounds?

Before transferring, export the project just in case.
If you're serious about keeping things intact, consider migrating to an Org-wide project and re-linking everything there.
If it's a classic project and you really need it, you may have to recreate it manually.

so summarizing repo moves, project doesn’t, issue links break.

[maxxer]

Once the repo is moved, the project at the original location will be completely broken, will it?

[Ob3y1]

Here's a detailed breakdown of what happens when transferring repositories with GitHub Projects and your options:

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1. Repository Transfer Impact on Projects

Aspect	Effect
Existing Project	Remains in the original personal account and doesn't automatically transfer
Issue References	✅ Preserved in the transferred repo (issues/PRs move with the repo)
Project Links	❌ Broken links to issues in the transferred repo (project stays in old account)

---

2. Post-Transfer Options

Option A: Keep Using Original Project

• Works temporarily via GitHub's automatic redirects for transferred repos
• Limitations:
  • Can't add new issues from the transferred repo to the old project
  • Collaboration restricted to original account permissions

Option B: Migrate Project Properly

# Using GitHub CLI for project migration
gh extension install github/gh-migrate-project
gh migrate-project --source-owner PERSONAL_ACCT --target-owner ORG --project-number 123

Requirements:

• Admin permissions on both accounts
• PAT with repo and admin:org scopes

---

3. Recommended Workflow

1. Transfer Repositories First

   gh repo transfer REPO_NAME --target-owner ORG --yes

2. Continue Using Old Project Temporarily
3. Migrate Project When Ready
   • Use gh-migrate-project or GitHub's native project import (if available)
4. Update Automation
   • CI/CD workflows
   • Issue templates
   • Webhooks

---

4. Key Considerations

Factor	Details
Permissions	Org members need read access to see migrated content
Timeline	Project migration can be done anytime after repo transfer
Data Integrity	Maintains original creation dates when using official migration tools
API References	Update any project IDs in scripts/automation

---

5. Alternative Solution

Create a new project in the Org and manually:

1. Export old project to CSV: `gh project --owner PERSONAL_ACCT -p 123 view --format csv > backup.csv`
2. Import to new Org project
3. Update repo references in new project

[maxxer]

Thank you very much for the detailed answer! What do you mean by Project Links: Broken links to issues in the transferred repo (project stays in old account)?

We use the project only for issues organization and we shouldn't have additional references (I'm not the owner). So I believe by moving the repo and then moving the project we should be 100% fine!

[maxxer]

Hm smells like AI-generated answer. gh migrate-project doesn't have an option to directly migrate from a owner to another, it only has export and import.

And GitHub's native project import (if available) is not such a thing.

[mecodeatlas]

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