Autonumbering after importing records

[cgilmour2]

Have just used an append query to transfer records from one database to
another - now the Autonumber seems to have jumped. The last record was, say,
#1000, 800 records were added, which is fine, but the Autonumbering is not
starting at 1801, as you would think, but there seems to be another 800
missing. Any thoughts on this? Ta!

 

[Melissa C. Winans]

The autonumber process is good for ensuring that each record's number is
unique, but cannot be relied upon to produce an unbroken sequence of
numbers. Skips in autonumber sequences can occur for any of a variety of
reasons. For example, if records are deleted, the numbers assigned to those
deleted records will not be reused.

Trying to figure out why it occurred in your case would require having been
there to observe the entire process, and even then it might not be clear
just what happened.

 

[John W. Vinson]

Have just used an append query to transfer records from one database to
another - now the Autonumber seems to have jumped. The last record was, say,
#1000, 800 records were added, which is fine, but the Autonumbering is not
starting at 1801, as you would think, but there seems to be another 800
missing. Any thoughts on this? Ta!

As Melissa says, this is quite unsurprising. Autonumbers will ALWAYS have
gaps. The purpose of an autonumber is to provide a meaningless unique key...
and that's IT. If you want sequential, or gapless, or a count of records,
don't use an autonumber; that's not their purpose.