Jon & Jeri, I have had my go-rounds with Access, and I agree that the Microsoft manuals are good only for paperweights. We have Access for Dummies, and that's helped me some - but I finally took an online class, and that was the best.

A lot of subjects seem large and scary to a lot of people, usually because the other people who really know about these subjects, speak in $20 words. The Idiots/Dummies guides are good for demystifying these sorts of things.