Every SSIS package has a unique ID associated with it. Most of the time it goes unnoticed, and most people don’t even realize (or care) that it’s there. You can see it in the package properties in Visual Studio, under Identification, listed as “ID”. It’s nothing more than a simple GUID. If for whatever reason you don’t like that GUID, Visual Studio allows you to generate a new one to use as the package ID:
However, what Visual Studio does not allow you to do is specify a GUID to use as the package ID. I get that. It’s not exactly going to be unique or random if you have the option to make it whatever you want. Unfortunately, I recently had a case where a package ID had been changed, and I needed to change it back to its previous ID. Since Visual Studio does not allow you to specify the package ID, I had to find another means of changing it.
Fortunately, parts of an SSIS package can also be viewed as XML. Knowing this, I was able to use an XML editor (I use XML Notepad) to modify the package and replace the existing package ID GUID with the one I wanted to use. If you look in the main DTS:Executable node, you’ll see the DTS:DTSID attribute that holds the package ID GUID.
Changing this value to the desired GUID and saving the file should change the package ID. To verify, after saving the package you can open it up in Visual Studio and should see your specified GUID listed for the package ID.