Agreed that you have the best idea, but unfortunately this is not a project big enough to get the company to go with that method. I am not allowed to get our IT guy to program anything for me on this project. I am trying to "hillbilly program" something to achieve what is needed.
I agree it is difficult to get people to use something. These are folks from overseas so I want to simplify the process as much as possible to avoid things getting lost in translation. I am already training them on many things in the system, so it is not a big deal to train them to use a particular email address or form to send me their requests.
With my experience in Excel macros I could do this form in Excel and make it work just fine. But I worry about compatibility issues with their versions of Excel, and I worry that they would be concerned about using a form with macros for security concerns.