Autonumber behaviour question

[Dennis Snelgrove]

I'm in the middle of designing a Dispatch Log in Access 97 to be used under
an NT4 network. It works pretty nicely when there's a single user entering
records, but I noticed that when I went to trying it with multiple users the
Autonumber ID field kicked out due to a duplicate value. I know when this
happened, as it was this specific scenario I was testing for. I started an
entry with User1, then started another entry with User2 on another PC. I
saved User1's entry, but when I went to save User2's entry, it kicked out.

I was under the impression (mistakenly, I guess) that the Autonumber field
would generate a new number each time a new record is started. But if I'm
reading this behaviour right, it's "internal counter" is incremented when a
record is saved instead, thereby allowing for the possibility of a
duplication in the Autonumber field. Is my observation correct, and if so,
how do others get around this? By using Replication?

Thanks for any input...

Dennis

[Steve Thompson]

I'd say you have 2 options for your autonumber field:
- create a custom counter
- change the increment option to random

Steve
"Dennis Snelgrove" <snel...@computan.on.ca> wrote in message
news:OXvEkdsKBHA.1628@tkmsftngp05...

[hai]

I'm currently working in Access 97 on NT and have not had
any problems with the autonumber in a multiuser
environment... I even tried to duplicate your problem by
opening multiple instances of access and adding records to
the same table. In all cases, the autonumber incremented
correctly...

-hai

>.
>

[Dennis Snelgrove]

Hmmm... I'll try it again this weekend when I go back in for my night shift.
It may have been a one-off situation...

Thanks fro your input, though...
hai <h...@nospam.gsk.com> wrote in message
news:169fe01c12b51$277bba90$9ae62ecf@tkmsftngxa02...

[Tony Toews]

"Dennis Snelgrove" <snel...@computan.on.ca> wrote:

>I'm in the middle of designing a Dispatch Log in Access 97 to be used under
>an NT4 network. It works pretty nicely when there's a single user entering
>records, but I noticed that when I went to trying it with multiple users the
>Autonumber ID field kicked out due to a duplicate value. I know when this
>happened, as it was this specific scenario I was testing for. I started an
>entry with User1, then started another entry with User2 on another PC. I
>saved User1's entry, but when I went to save User2's entry, it kicked out.
>
>I was under the impression (mistakenly, I guess) that the Autonumber field
>would generate a new number each time a new record is started. But if I'm
>reading this behaviour right, it's "internal counter" is incremented when a
>record is saved instead, thereby allowing for the possibility of a
>duplication in the Autonumber field.

Something wierd is going on. One of my clients has 15 users into the
BE half of which are adding records all day long. We've never seen
such a problem. The BE has 120 or 140 or more tables with 200Kb
records in one and 100Kb records in four or five other tables.

If you display the autonumber field on the form you should see it
being displayed as soon as you key any character in a new record.

Have you installed SR-1, SR-2 and Jet35SP3? Even then I don't recall
this message pre SR-1.

What was the exact error message? Not that I don't believe you but
maybe the error message was a bit misleading.

Tony
----
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

[Dennis Snelgrove]

I guess it was a one-off situation, folks. I tried it today with the exact
same database on the same two PCs, and it worked like it was supposed to.
Weird, but I'm not going to argue with it unless it starts to re-occur
again.

Thanks for everyone's help!

Dennis

Dennis Snelgrove <snel...@computan.on.ca> wrote in message

news:ecpEqU2KBHA.852@tkmsftngp07...