Newbie SET AUTO_INCREMENT question

Hi :) I have some data that each week needs to be moved to an archive and deleted from the original. Archived data is also recycled each week. I mostly have the process working and it flows like the following... // empty a pair of tables (archives data) DELETE FROM listingsDB_archive DELETE FROM listingsDBElements_archive // copy the contents from a pair of similar tables (current data) // to the recently emptied tables (archives data) INSERT INTO listingsDB_archive SELECT * FROM listingsDB INSERT INTO listingsDBElements_archive SELECT * FROM listingsDBElements // empty the similar tables(current data) DELETE FROM listingsDB DELETE FROM listingsDBElements This works fine except the auto incrementing 'ID' field in listingsDB (the autoindex field) is reset to 0 each time. I need to NOT have the autoindex reset, but instead to have it keep running uninterrupted. Some reading at mysql.com makes me think I can do something like the following, but I'm stuck... ALTER listingsDB SET AUTO_INCREMENT=xx or ALTER listingsDB SET INSERT_ID=xx Actually, I know I would need to somehow find and store the correct value for AUTO_INCREMENT before I delete from listingsDB and then restore it. I'm just wondering, am I going in the right direction or am I barking up the wrong tree? TIA, verdon PS please cc me in any replies to list.