Thank you, Paul. This all makes sense to me.

I'm less worried about the end-user's experience level (which, as you pointed out, does not matter a whole lot) than I am my own. One thing I did not state in my original post is that the Excel workbooks I've completed are end-user ready, and until yesterday's Access course I was ready to roll them out. For a variety of reasons, I do not want to wait another couple of months for the end-user to do the data entry. The reports and queries can wait until I'm more familiar with the program, but I'd like to start storing the actual information itself.

Now, I understand that Excel tables can easily be imported to Access, and I have no doubt that the first worksheet, which contains the static client demographic information, could be used now and imported to Access later. I'm uncertain, however, as to how Access would handle the second sheet.

For that reason, I'm attaching the workbook which is end-user ready for our nursing homes. (No private or protected information was used). As you can see, there's some VBA (written by colleagues, edited by me - I'm not fluent!) which right now is "forcing" Excel to act corectly Again, the way it works is as follows:

Upon admission, client data is inputted into the worksheet 'Client Demos'
At the end of a patient's assessment period, or after they're discharged from short-term care, a new entry is added to the 'Outcomes' worksheet. The client's MR # is entered into column A, which then creates a dropdown box in the corresponding cell in column B which lists the client's admission dates. From there, columns d:w are filled in. The user then enters the assessment period/type, the "RUG Category" (corresponds with reimbursement rate), whether the reason for entering the data is because of a new assessment or discharge, and finally the date of new assessment/discharge in columns c, w, x and y respectively.

With all of this in mind, can the second sheet's information - with tweaks - be imported safely to Access from Excel once the Access database is up and running? Or would I be best off importing the first sheet only, and having someone do a one-time major 'catch-up' data entry when we're ready to convert from Excel to Access?

Thank you again for your assistance.

Adam