sadly, it didn't work. i tried running the update on both standard and custom project form. the import runs and completes without errors but the record is unchanged.

Are you talking about changing the customer associated with a project? If so, this can only be done if there are no transactions associated with the project. After that, you just gotta create a new project and close out the old one.

i still don't get why NetSuite locks that but thank you.