title: Creating Surrogate Keys in Access
body: <p>I have a project that I am working on where we have to create a registration system for a university in Access. One of the tables requires a surrogate key for one of the fields, and I am not sure how I can create a surrogate key.</p>
  
  <p>The column instructions look like this:</p>
  
  <p><code>Field Name     Data Type     Field Size     Caption     Format     Req'd     Index     Unique Key     Ref. Table     Other</code></p>
  
  <p><code>FacultyID     Text     4     blank     blank     Yes     Yes     Primary     blank     Input Mask '0000;1;_'</code></p>
  
  <p><code>FirstName     Text     32     blank     blank     Yes     No     Surrogate*     blank     blank</code></p>
  
  <p>So the first field, <code>FacultyID</code> is straightforward and simple to make. But the <code>FirstName</code> field requires a surrogate key that I do not know how to make.</p>
  
  <p>It also has the asterisk next to it, and at the bottom of the page the asterisk reads:</p>
  
  <p><code>*Index [LastName], [FirstName]: Duplicates Allowed (surrogate key)</code></p>
  
  <p>The <code>LastName</code> field is listed later but I didn't show it in my question. What confuses me with this, however, is that in the column instructions, it says that the <code>Index</code> field should be <code>No</code> for <code>FirstName</code>, but this note at the bottom of the page makes it seem like it should be <code>Yes (Duplicates OK)</code> and I do not know what to put.</p>
  
  <p>So can anyone help me figure out how to make the <code>FirstName</code> a Surrogate Key, and also what I should be putting in the <code>Index</code> field?</p>