How to get id of newly inserted record using Excel VBA?

Question

Seems a common enough problem this, but most solutions refer to concatenating multiple SQL commands, something which I believe can't be done with ADO/VBA (I'll be glad to be shown wrong in this regard however).

I currently insert my new record then run a select query using (I hope) enough fields to guarantee that only the newly inserted record can be returned. My databases are rarely accessed by more than one person at a time (negligible risk of another insert happening between queries) and due to the structure of the tables, identifying the new record is normally pretty easy.

I'm now trying to update a table that does not have much scope for uniqueness, other than in the artificial primary key. This means there is a risk that the new record may not be unique, and I'm loathe to add a field just to force uniqueness.

What's the best way to insert a record into an Access table then query the new primary key from Excel in this situation?

Thanks for the replies. I have tried to get @@IDENTITY working, but this always returns 0 using the code below.

Private Sub getIdentityTest()
    Dim myRecordset As New ADODB.Recordset
    Dim SQL As String, SQL2 As String

    SQL = "INSERT INTO tblTasks (discipline,task,owner,unit,minutes) VALUES (""testDisc3-3"",""testTask"",""testOwner"",""testUnit"",1);"
    SQL2 = "SELECT @@identity AS NewID FROM tblTasks;"

    If databaseConnection Is Nothing Then
        createDBConnection
    End If

    With databaseConnection
        .Open dbConnectionString
        .Execute (SQL)
        .Close
    End With

    myRecordset.Open SQL2, dbConnectionString, adOpenStatic, adLockReadOnly

    Debug.Print myRecordset.Fields("NewID")

    myRecordset.Close

    Set myRecordset = Nothing
End Sub

Anything stand out being responsible?

However, given the caveats helpfully supplied by Renaud (below) there seems nearly as much risk with using @@IDENTITY as with any other method, so I've resorted to using SELECT MAX for now. For future reference though I would be interested to see what is wrong with my attempt above.

Answer 1

Here's my solution that does not use @@index or MAX.

Const connectionString = "Provider=SQLOLEDB; Data Source=SomeSource; Initial Catalog=SomeDB; User Id=YouIDHere; Password=YourPassword"
Const RecordsSQL = "SELECT * FROM ThatOneTable"

Private Sub InsertRecordAndGetID()
    Set connection = New ADODB.connection
    connection.connectionString = connectionString
    connection.Open
    Set recordset = New ADODB.recordset
    recordset.Open SQL, connection, adOpenKeyset, adLockOptimistic

    With recordset
        .AddNew
        !Field1 = Value1
        !Field2 = Value2
    End With

    recordset.MoveLast
    ID = recordset.Fields("id")

End Sub

Enjoy!