I am sure that whatever specialty program you purcahse, or obtain through freeware, will force you to do quite a bit of clean up work to the data you already have collected and are hoping to convert. I am not trying to discourgae you, just stating the facts. Once you make your choice, you will spend a lot of time learning how to use the new program, how to set up the conversion, and preparing the data to convert.

You may find that using a combination of the three Microsoft products already mentioned: WORD, Excel and Access - is your best bet. You already have some level of skill, and both WORD and Excel have features that make data cleanup relatively easy and straight forward (FIND and REPLACE, SORT, cut and paste, etc, etc). Then it is a simple matter of laying out the database (Access has some easy learn tools for this) and importing the cleanned up data.

While it may seem a daunting task at the outset, once you decide to go this way, and once you begin the work - you'll see that is it fairly straight forward, and simply a matter of plucking away at it until the task is complete.

Best of luck to you, no matter what way you choose to go!