The Autonumber datatype exists solely for generating unique Long
Integers to serve as surrogate keys. That is not where your problem
and pollution lie.
From your earlier post in this area it seems that your issue is that
your problem becomes visible when you try to revive or re-enter
records that you have previously *deleted*.
Rather than deleting records it might be better to create a new
*status* field to indicate that they are inactive. It will require
adjusting your queries and some logic to keep your system working well
but the current problem would then be solved. When a record is to be
revived, simply find it and change the *status* field. If your data
grows so rapidly that you must purge "deleted" records you can simply
copy and save the existing data to the archives and then purge all
"deleted" records from the current records. Should you ever need to
re-enter a purged record you can copy it (and all related records)
from the archived copy. By the way, that archiving and copying method
would work for your current method. With your current method you'd
have to make many more references to the archives.
HTH
