Record number

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Guest

Is there a way to reference an Access table record number? I am ordering a
report a certain way, but would like to be able to also print the actual
physical record number on the report.
ctdak
 
ctdak said:
Is there a way to reference an Access table record number? I am ordering a
report a certain way, but would like to be able to also print the actual
physical record number on the report.
Click to expand...

By definition, records in relational tables are unordered... that is, unless
you generate one, there is no "record number" as you may have had in other
database products.

If you simply mean the unique id of the Record, that is a field in the
Record, which you can display in a Text Box.

The Autonumber is often used for a unique id, but it is not guaranteed to be
a sequential number... generally it is in ascending order, but is not
necessarily monotonically ascending (that is, it does not necessarily
increase by one every record).

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP
 
Thanks for the info. Pardon my ignorance, but where is the unique ID of the
record that you say is a field in the record? I have never seen that field.
ctdak
 
Thanks for the info. Pardon my ignorance,
but where is the unique ID of the record
that you say is a field in the record? I have
never seen that field.
Click to expand...

Generally, some individual field or some combination of fields taken
together uniquely identify each record. That is the "unique id" I was
talking about, not some database-generated property. It is, of course,
possible to create tables that do not have unique records, and thus, no
unique id, but it is rare to see that in a well-designed, normalized,
relational database.

Autonumbers are often used as "surrogate keys" for convenience in creating
joins where it takes a combination of several fields to uniquely identify
the record. Some database designers _always_ use an autonumber surrogate
key, even if the record is uniquely identified by a single field, but that
is an unnecessary complication.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP
 
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