Thursday, May 17, 2012

Setting Autonumber Values Easy

I'm sure that when in access, once you setup a new table and set the field as an autonumber field, you might want something other than 1, increment by more than 1, or restart at 1. I've read tutorials and artilcles where you have to make a copy  of the table and many more steps. Well you won't be deleting anything except relationsips if you already set them. I'm not sure what it will do to a table that already has values in it.


  1. Delete your current relationships
  2. Create a new query in design view
  3. Switch to SQL view
  4. paste this code: ALTER TABLE TableName ALTER COLUMN FieldName COUNTER (Starting Number ex: 1000,increment by ex: 5);
    That means the first number will be 1000 and the next one will be 1005. Here is what I done so that I could restart the autonumber field back to 1.
  5. Run the query.
You can keep that query for future uses just make sure you open it in design view.