CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I designed some custom fields for our test integration early on in the process to facilitate data import, but I'm now having second thoughts about the architecture now that I understand better how memberships work.

Am I correct is saying that a membership custom field is suited for storing information relating to a specific memberhip instance/period, and that information which is permanent (such as a member ID number) is better stored as a contact custom field?

If the above is correct, is it possible to change the filed type, or do I need to export data, delete the membership field, add the contact field and re-import data?

Agree w/ Erik that a permanent 'membership ID' attribute should probably be part of the Contact record. Unfortunately you can't change the "Used For" setting for an Custom Data Set so export => import is your best bet.