Hi Ian,

I think when you were looking at your data in "spreadsheet format" you
were looking at the matrix for the underlying data tables.  It is
unfortunate that whoever developed your database in Access seems not to
have bothered to develop any forms as front ends to these tables.

I have developed a large relational database in Access (about 70,000
records [250,000 objects/archarological specimens] spread over 100+ data
tables) with few frustrations -- particularly compared to our previous
development environment, ORACLE.

Richard Gerrard
Registrar, Collections Management

BTW. with the forms wizard [an automated forms generation tool wich
comes standard in Access] you can create a basic, but functioning, form
in about 2 minutes.  Editing it for style can take a lifetime, but isn't
that the problem with a graphical interface?  Where's my command line?