How do you renumber a field that is set to autonumber?

[Guest]

Each record in my database is numbered consecutively using the autonumber
feature. I needed to delete one of the files, however, and now want to assign
the deleted number to another record. Is this possible?

 

[Douglas J Steele]

No, it's not.

Autonumbers exist for one purpose only: to provide a (practically
guaranteed) unique value that can be used as a primary key. Gaps in the
numbering do not affect that purpose.

If the value of the field is important to you, you probably shouldn't be
using an Autonumber field. As you've discovered, they are not guaranteed to
be gap-free. In fact, it's unusual to even show the value of the field to
users.

 

[Steve Schapel]

Detwiler,

Yes, you can use an Append Query to add a record to the table with the
"missing" number.

 

[Terry Kreft]

.... but see Doug Steeles comments as to why if you "need" to do this then
you are using the autonumber field for th wrong reasosns.