I have a form for new applicants to an education program. I need the form to generate student numbers when a new applicant is recorded.

The student number should be in the form of the four digit year followed by a dash and then a sequential 5 digit number.

i.e. "2001-00001"

This organization has never used student numbers before so whatever format I suggest will probably be accepted. There will probably also be multiple users using this databse at the same time.

Keagan Quilty
Kilbride, Newfoundland

You need a field for the current year and one for an autonumber field. Then to display the student ID in the correct format, you would use

=txtYear & "-" & format(ID,"00000")

Why not just use an autonumber? If you want the number to always be 5 digits, you can start it at 10000 by using an append query to insert a row with that value given for the autonumber column. After you have added the first real student, you can delete the dummy number. The autonumber will just keep numbering sequentially from that point. If you want to track when a student first entered the school, use a standard date field for that purpose as charity suggested. But don't make it part of the studentID.