bobharding

Thanks for getting back Pashers. I suspect you're right. I guess that what I was looking for initially was a form designer for excel then maybe extending this to a piece of software that acted as a 'server' for and excel worksheet. Access does have forms of course but I'm worried that the 'database' as a single application doesn't seem very 'real life'. Basically the SQL route seems much better ultimately and I wondered if a simplified server would be possible ..... imagine pupils building a mock 'facebook' or media player application? Doing this in Access would be a real stretch but the concepts are not too outlandish. Ho hum - never mind - guess I'll keep looking Thanks anyway Bob

Hi all I have a feeling that the answer to this is going to be far more complicated that I realise but ... Datahandling is often a difficult topic to teach and not helped by software that makes a mountain out of a molehill (IMHO). I know that Access is very powerful but is often a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Most pupils can get on OK with excel but it's difficult to edit single records or to create queries and reports. It occurs to me that if you could have a nice 'form' tool that connects to an excel back end then this would overcome some problems. Something cool may even offer xml conversion, searching and queries. Something really cool may allow multiple users to access a single excel file (or maybe connect easily to a SQL server) fo that you can have multiple input. Has anyone ever seem anything like this? Bob