Can I change the customer number in admin?

I want to change the customer start number from 1. How do I do this?

If this is a fresh shop with no customers - Backup the DB before doing anything.

Create one customer as normal then use your mysql DB Tool - phpmyadmin for many.

browse the customers table and customers_info table and edit the customer id for this customer to a higher number.

The next customer will increment from this value

Be careful on changing customer_id ...

The following tables and fields for:
customers - customers_id
customers_info - customers_info_id
address_book - customers_id

all need to be updated so that the match properly with the new value ...

Thanks Ajeh...I missed the one for address_book - customers_id

Maybe this is a stupid question but when I delete al test customers zen cart keeps counting as if they still exist. Can I change to a lower number if there are no customers?

Yes, you can
The question is: why do you want to do that, does it bother you that much?
If not, leave it as is to avoid wasting your time or messing up something.

My client wants to merge his store store customers with those form his future webshop. there are no clients in the webshop so its easy to do now. But it doesnt work when I try to change it:oops:.

In phpMyAdmin after you select your table in the left hand frame by clicking, there will be a tab at the top of the right hand frame labeled OPERATIONS. On that page it contains the auto_increment value that will be the next assigned customer id.

At least in phpMyAdmin version 2.8.0.1 used by my host.

Karl