CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

i think from an organizational standpoint, it might be better to retain the history of individuals having a now-deprecated membership type, and create a new membership record with the new membership type. that way you preserve a more accurate history.

as for handling something like that, you can do bulk membership import. so you could export current members and then reimport them with the new category

the sql should be fine. just make sure no other data in the records are impacted by settings in the membership type. for example, if one or the other has inheritance via relationships, you might need to alter the changed records to accommodate the difference. but if both types were structured similarly, it should be sufficient to just change the type id.

you can get current members by going to the membership dashboard or doing a search with status = new, current, grace (those three status types are generally considered to be "current"). then select all records and use the action dropdown to export.