Is there a way to reset autoincrementing fields to 1? I don’t want to drop the field because that destroys the associated connections, logic, JS and CSS references, forms etc. I just want to clear a table back to empty and start the counter fields from 1 again.
Hi @LeighBerre96926, I don’t believe there is a way to reset the auto increment value.
I tested changing the field type from Auto Inc to Text and back, and it didn’t update.
Two options:
Knack Finder
You can use Knack Finder to locate everywhere that is referencing the auto increment field in your app and carefully replace all references with a new auto inc. field.
Custom incrementing
If you think you’ll encounter needing to reset the increment in future, you can set up the auto increment in a custom way where its controlled via a connected table, as shown in this video:
2026-08-26, Knack Forum, Custom Auto Increment.mp4
Let me know what you end up doing!
Stepen I think you win the prize for the most detailed response to any question ever!
Thanks so much - I had vaguely considered doing something like this instead of being lazy with auto increment fields, but hadn’t really thought through the mechanics of it. Your approach works perfectly, and has the very real advantage that it allows sharing of automatic incremented numbers across tables, or as you show to split autoincrement numbers based on filters.
The motivation for this is I am hoping to actually sell a specific app as a hosted solution, but separate instances per client for security reasons, and I needed a way to start from scratch in each instance. This approach makes that a walk in the park.
My future apps, and the one I was enquiring about, will now contain one more reference table - REF_AUTO_INCREMENTS, which will hold every needed auto increment field for the app.
Thanks again.