Hello,
Microsoft Access can be very useful, but unfortunately, there is a learning curve. Access is a relational database that allows you to have multiple related tables. This is great for reducing redundancy but can be difficult if you have never done it before.
The basic concept is the elimination of duplicate data. For example, in a basic employee database, you could have an EMPLOYEE table. Each employee would have a single record or row in this table with a unique identifier. EMPLOYEE POSITION HISTORY could be a separate table. For each single employee record in the EMPLOYEE table, you could have multiple related rows in the EMPLOYEE POSITION HISTORY table based on each past position the employee has held.
Access can be a very powerful tool, but look into it before jumping in. I have seen many poorly designed Access databases in my time.
The link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/209534 provides some great information for DATABASE NORMALIZATION (Organization of Data) in Microsoft Access.
Good Luck!
Mark
Email: mark@hrdatamanager.com