Preserving program change numbers in new gig

I have my main gig holding 250 rackspaces. These are program numbered consecutively according to my iPad alphabetical list. I just made up a up a new gig holding 20 songs for a concert. When I imported the 20 rackspaces in order of performance, all the program numbers reordered themselves 1 to 20. I had to go through each rackspace and reset the program numbers the same as my iPad. Is there any way when importing rackspaces to force them to hold their given program numbers?

Hmmm - this should be an option I think. The same holds for a person building their gig and having a hardware pedal let’s say. They may want to always reset the numbers.

Maybe holding the shift key down while importing could attempt to preserve the PC numbers. I say attempt because it cannot be guaranteed that the PC number would not be already taken, but if it isn’t we could preserve it.

Thoughts?

This I just the start of what I want to do. I’m going to re-arrange my entire song list into random order setlists of 19 songs each, each of which will fill in a hour for me. I would like to retain all the program numbers for the entire 250 songs aka rackspaces rather than have to go through again and hand correct all of the 250 program numbers.

Why hold the shift key down - just try to preserve the PC number. If someone is using a hardware pedal, then it’s trivial for them to just reset the numbers.

How trivial is it to renumber 250 rackspaces? It takes ages, and then program numbers need to be checked as being correct.

I don’t understand what you’re asking — @djogon suggested retaining program changes if you hold the shift key down. I’m suggesting that we could retain program changes where possible without having to hold the shift key down.

My apologies. I misunderstood the response.