Change primary key from autonumber to text field?

[tbleecker]

I've got a database which includes a number of tables, some of which
are linked on a primary key. When I first designed it, they didn't
have a unique identifier for the table entries, so I just used an
autonumber field. Now, they have a unique identifier which includes
numbers and text strings.

I thought I could use the cascading update feature to change change
the primary key, but access won't let me change the property of the id
field from an autonumber to a text field without deleting all the
tabled relationships. This would be a huge hassle, as then all those
links will be worthless, and would all have to be updated.

Is there some way to do this? Or should I just put their new unique
identifier in the table as a field, but continue using the autonumber
field as a primary key? After all, it's not doing any harm there...

 

[Klatuu]

Leave it alone. When you have multiple fields with different data types as a
Primary Key, it will slow down performance. Anytime you add a record, delete
a record, or modify one of the fields it has to rebuild the key. It is not
as noticable in Jet as it is in SQL Sever, but still does degrade performance.