>>Hi Elyse,
>>
>>Why you not put a trigger for delete that blank/nulled deleted records ?
>>
>>Fabio
>
>I don't want to lose the information in the deleted records.

Then in your trigger that looks to see if an existing number already exists, you need to check deleted records as well [SET DELETED OFF]. After the check, SET DELETED back ON. Before you do this check, set some flag for the trigger so it knows you are about to recall a record and set another property or memvar of what the RECNO() is of the record about to be recalled. That way the trigger can ignore this particular record in its search for other duplicate numbers.