How to Serialize each report instead of numbering the pages.

[WestBank]

Dear Friends,

I am in receipt of thousands of stickers from a vendor that are missing serial numbers.

I am using MS Access to print these stickers; a few at a time as required throughout the day.

I would like to add a text box to the stickers that serializes each printed sticker (or query a table that I can install in the DDF that contains nothing more than serial numbers from "0001" to "9999".)

It's tricky. I'm not sure how to accomplish this.

Has anyone successfully done this?



For instance: stickers printed at 9:00am would be numbered, "0001","0002","0003" and the stickers printed at 10:00am would be numbered, "0004", "0005", "0006" etc.

I'm sure there is an elegant way; I just don't know about it.

Take care,
Alex

[ranman256]

append your data to a 'report' table, with an autonumber field.
report on this table.
there's your serial#.

[orange]

What do 9:00 and 10:00 am have to do with this?

[June7]

What does DDF mean? What's on these stickers? You want to print a serial number onto these stickers?

Generating custom unique identifier is a common topic. Here is one https://www.accessforums.net/forms/a...ing-23329.html

[WestBank]

Thanks for responding! Question answered in the order they were received:

a.) 9:00am and 10:00am were used merely for example purposes. Let's say I want to print stickers at various times per day and each successive sticker has a serial number (from the range "0001" to "9999") printed along with the other fixed and variable information. So... at sticker printed at 9:00am, for example, has serial number "0025" and the next sticker printed at 10:00am, for example, has serial number "0026".

b.) DDF = data dictionary file.

c.) The stickers are enormous polylith things that contain lots of fix and variable data about coils of steel.

d.) Yes, I do want to print serial numbers because the vendor shipped thousands of cartons of stickers to the factory without serial numbers. I'm just trying to salvage the stickers and print the serial numbers as I print the other data.

[June7]

So these stickers don't have any kind of unique identifier?

You need a table of the serial numbers. Can be only the one field. Code will look for the last used number and create new records incrementing from there.

Or pre-establish the bazillion records with the sequential number and have another field (yes/no) WasPrinted. Again, code finds the next available record and prints then sets value of WasPrinted to Yes.

Polylith - expanding my vocabulary today! Oh, like monolith.

[WestBank]

Yes, a table of serial numbers.

[June7]

And your options are to use an autonumber for the serial or code to generate. Did you review the referenced link?

[orange]

Access, and other relational databases, works best with 1 fact stored in 1 field.

[WestBank]

I have not referenced the link just yet but I'm getting there. details to follow! Thank you! Alex