I am having a problem with primary keys. I have a main table called
Transactions. It's primary key is made up of three fields (date,
account, amount) so that Access will catch any bills that I try to
enter more than once.
There is another field, transactionID, that is an autonumber assigned
to each record. TransactionID is linked to another table called
Distribution. I need this link to perform cascade updates and
deletes. When I attempt to do this, Access will not allow me to
because this field is not a primary key. Any ideas as to how I can
make this work?

Make TransactionalID the Primary Key (that's the only intended use of the
Autonumber field). Cascading updates and deletes should now work. Any
child tables should have the Primary Key of the Parent table entered as a
long integer foreign key.

Note that the content of an autonumver field should never be visible to a
human. While it is pretty well going to yield unique numbers, they are not
guaranteed to be in a gapless sequence.

HTH
--
-Larry-
--

"delores h." <dhildebrandt (AT) shaw (DOT) ca> wrote

I agree, but you might want to also add a secondary index to your main table
that will continue to catch the duplicate bills.

Good Luck.

"Larry Daugherty" <ladaugherty (AT) NoSpam (DOT) earthlink.net> wrote