Actually, after a totally last effort attempt I was inspecting the SQL table in Access and noticed that the (Auto Increment) feature was not turned on for my table. I enable it (it is called Identity in Access-- who knows why) and all of a sudden it all worked. You were right you don't need to use that field at all it just auto increments it.

I'm guessing that when I setup the table that field was not created as an "ai" field and so the code to let the SQL server know that was never processed. I then later added the ai field into the def file rather than deleting the table and recreating it the correct way. Out of pure curiosity, is there any way to make a field auto-increment after the table is created? (other than manually turning it on in SQL)

Thank you for your willingness to help me on this problem but I think I got it all figured out now. Maybe you can help me on my next problem... see new posting in this forum.