Auto-Increment a New Unique ID

[Mellen105]

I am very to new to Access and have some basics down but have been stuck on my current situation for a few hours now. I've been reading several posts about how to create an auto incrementing unique ID for new records on a form and need some help. With my limited knowledge I am going to need help with simple things like what screens and buttons to click on so please bear with me as I get through this.



I have created a form to add new records to my table. What I want to do is when I create a new record by hitting the "Add New Record" button it will populate my auto incrementing unique ID. My ID will be stored in a field titled "RequestNumber" and looks like this R_2013_001, R_2013_002, R_2013_003, R_2014_001, R_2014_002, R_2014_001, etc. Essentially I have R as a prefix, the year the request was made, and then the auto-incrementing number at the end. The auto-incrementing number should start over at the beginning of each year.

My situation is pretty similar to this thread. I need a bit more help though as I am a complete beginner to this portion of Access. I need help modifying the code, knowing how and where to put it within Access and the finally how to properly set up my "Add New Record" button.

I will be the only one using this database so I do not need to worry about another user creating records at the same time.

Key fields in my database:
Unique ID = "ReqestNumber" - this is the field to be auto-populated
Date = "DateRequested" - auto-populates with today's date for a new record

Thanks for the help!

[June7]

I do that - generate unique ID and start over each year. Here is my code http://forums.aspfree.com/microsoft-...ta-403208.html

[Mellen105]

Thanks for the help, but honestly this is still over my head. I don't even really know where to add this code in through Access or how to configure the "add new record" button properly. Access and VBA are both very new to me.

[June7]

Do you have any programming knowledge? From any programming language?

Start learning with:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ac...010341717.aspx
http://www.ehow.com/about_6621833_in...ogramming.html

[Mellen105]

I've done some stuff in Python, but nothing too extensive. Those were pretty simple codes set up to use a series of procedures in the proper order. VBA I have done no coding with. Within Access I have set up databases, forms and simple queries and relationships but nothing too extensive. I have never had to code anything similar to this.

I'll spend some time reading through those links you sent but any other additional help is greatly appreciated.

[June7]

Basically, the function code from my example goes in a general module. The other code is shown behind a button on form and that would be the most likely case for you. I have the code split because the function is called from several forms.

I don't know your db so hard to say what the exact mods will be, certainly table and field names will be different.