[testudovictoria]

I was going to say that I have a small, very limited amount of experience with MS Access. I agree; the middle ground between Excel and databases sounds very similar to Access.

We had been using Excel for org charts like most places. We wanted to add grouping, metadata, and neatly be able to extend/add information with or without constraints. This was much before I knew anything database related, and Access seemed to be more powerful than Excel. Having generated forms to fit the data model was much more user friendly and a lot less error prone than adding a new row to an Excel sheet.

People criticize Access for being a dumb database or a Excel with too much heavy lifting. It occupies a specific space as a DB on rails.

[gbrown]

I was mostly being glib, but I've had some bad experiences with Access over the years. I actually think lightweight database and scripting utilities in Excel could be good, but it would be susceptible to some of the design traps that Access steps on.

[infogulch]

What are the biggest design traps that Access fell into? If someone were rebuilding spreadsheets with more structured design like Access, what should they avoid?