Autoincreament gone bananas

[Svein Engebretsen]

Hi,- I have an autoincrement field that has gone bananas. It worked fine
until the number 4727, after that is has produced numbers sach
as -2066745581, and 35016844 etc.

Is there a way to normalize the situation?

Svein

 

[Lynn Trapp]

Has the "new values" property of the field been changed to "Random"?

 

[Svein Engebretsen]

Yes it has!

Is it possible to manually reset the values according to the prior
countervalues and then change the property - hopefully with the result of
restoring the the countervalueseries?

Svein

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Once it's been set to Random, you cannot set it back to Sequential. As well,
you cannot change the value of an Autonumber field once it's been assigned.

However, what does it matter? Autonumbers exist for one purpose only: to
provide a (practically guaranteed) unique value that can be used as a
primary key. -2066745581, 35016844, -3530 fulfills that purpose just as well
as 4725, 4726, 4727. In actual fact, your users shouldn't even be aware of
the value of the Autonumber field: it's really intended to be an internal
thing only. If you're trying to assign meaning to the value, you probably
shouldn't be using an Autonumber field.

 

[Rob Oldfield]

You could add another AutoNumber (increment) column to the table, then run
some manual update queries on child tables, then delete the original
AutoNumber field, but....

As Doug says, it's pointless.