Confirmation Number

[ChrisR]

I am working on a form where a user would enter data about a product
discrepancy from the sales field organization (cost, price, date of
discrepancy, comments, etc.) and I would like to append the data to a log
table that will have an autonumber field generate a unique confirmation
number. I would then want to give the user this confirmation number within
the form after they click a "submit" button. My question, is how to have it
return the confirmation number just created by the append? My first thought
was to link back from the form to the table on the key fields and pull the
confirmation number that was auto-created. Since I have not dealt much with
auto number fields in the past I wanted to see if there is some established
way of optimizing this type of task.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

c-

 

[betwalk]

If you are going to use Autonumber to generate numbers that will have
meaning to the user, you need to consider whether or not it matters if
any numbers get skipped. For instance, if you generate a discrepancy
entry into the log table and then delete that entry for any reason,
will it matter to you that the number that was assigned to the now
deleted entry is no longer available for you to use? If you care about
gaps in the numbering, don't use Autonumber for this task. Instead you
can generate the number yourself using something like dmax to figure
out what the next number in the sequence should be.

Sorry not to answer your question, but thought you should think about
this, too.

Betsy

 

[ChrisR]

Not concerned about the autonumber so much. Will only be entering about 500
records per year and do not expect to delete records but could flag as
inactive with a checkbox (to exclude from reporting).