"John W. Vinson" wrote in message
news
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:04:17 -0500, "Arvin Meyer [MVP]"

wrote:

Not unless a number is deleted. That can always happen. There is never a
100% guarantee that a record will not be deleted. Remember what I said.
The
largest an autonumber can be is 2,147,483,647. that 10 digits. 8,146,614
is
a seed, there won't be any holes unless they are created, by adding a
higher
seed sometime later.

Is that correct, Arvin? IME if you even *start* adding a new record
manually
(on a form, or directly in a table), an autonumber is generated; if you
hit
ESC or otherwise cancel the addition before it's saved to disk, the
autonumber gets used up and skipped... leaving a gap.

Has this changed without my noticing?


I think that Arvin is recommending this method with the caveat that the user
may create gaps by either deletion or by discarding a new but unsaved
record. To me that does not satisfy the OP's requirement. Even if you
disallow deletions you'll never stop users from creating new records and
then changing their minds, and why should you?

Keith.