"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?

Is hitting escape, not akin to deleting a record? With an Access form, or
any bound form, the first character typed creates a record, does it not?
ESC is what one would do to delete that record.

I think we are saying the same thing in different ways. Autonumbers cannot
be reused, whether the record is started or deleted. Once used, it's gone.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.mvps.org/access
http://www.accessmvp.com