Generate a unique form number

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Guest

I am using Office 2003 on Windows XP.

I have a form built in Excel that will be placed in an Outlook folder making
it accessible to all users within our organization.

Each time a user opens this form a unique number must be generated on the
form.

Suppose I convert the Excel date to a value: e.g. Aug 17, 2005 becomes 38363
and for time I use 5:34:15 pm = 173415. Now suppose I add these two numbers
together and also add the user's computer ID to this (each user must have a
unique computer ID) for example: 83177.

This would then be 38363 + 173415 + 83177 = 294955

Question: Since this value is date and time based and combines a unique
computer ID, would this ALWAYS generate a unique six digit form number?

The form number does need to be unique, but not necessarily in sequence Any
one have any other suggestions?
 
Thanks Norman.

I don't need sequential numbers, just unique ones. I don't really want to
mess with the registry nor maintain a separate file to track the numbers.

That's why I was looking for a numbering method that could be generated
based on date, time, and user computer ID. Do you think my concept would work
to generate a unique number?

Even if two users happened to open the template file within the same second,
their unique box ID would still render a unique number. I'm just worried
about numbering overlap between years, etc. What do you think? - Do you know
any other websites to check?

Thanks much for your help!
 
quartz,

This will not give a unique number.
If the same user goes in the next day, but 1 second earlier, your formula
would give the same result.
Same user number, date increased by 1, time reduced by 1.

Henry
 
Hi Quartz,

I seem to recall an especially interesting post from Harlan Grove on the
topic of creating unique numbers.

It might be worth performing a google search for Harlan's Unique Number
contributions.
 
Oh yeah... :-(

Thanks for your response.

Henry said:
quartz,

This will not give a unique number.
If the same user goes in the next day, but 1 second earlier, your formula
would give the same result.
Same user number, date increased by 1, time reduced by 1.

Henry
Click to expand...
 
? cdbl(Now*10^10)
385823491435185

It would be highly unlikely that this number would be duplicated. You could
prepend a unique letter combination for each user to insure uniquensss

? "ABC" & cdbl(Now*10^10)
ABC385823512615741
 
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