I think I asked for some help before, with a different project involving Access. I was able to get that one working pretty much as intended. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done. (And the boss was happy with it, so that's a definite plus.)
I now have a new problem: I've been using an Excel spreadsheet to track permit applications, submittal dates, response dates, result, and the processing time in days. I have a master worksheet with one row for each project and summary information, with a hyperlink to a worksheet for each application that has entries for the project name, address, application number, application date ... and then a table that lists the date each submittal is received, the date we responded, the action taken, and the number of days elapsed between submittal and response. The corresponding entries on the master worksheet are populated by look-ups from the detail sheets.
The primary purpose of this is to keep track of which submittals that haven't been acted on yet have been in the queue the longest, so I can look at the oldest first. That means every time I update the workbook, either by adding a new project or by changing the status of an existing project, I have to manually run a two-level custom sort -- which is imperfect, so I than have to follow up by manually moving one or two rows up or down to get every open project in correct chronological order.
That wasn't too daunting when the spreadsheet was new and there only a few entries. It's now up to 150 projects, with more coming in virtually every day. I think this whole mess could probably run a lot smoother if it were in an Access database ... but I have no idea how to even start setting it up. Is there anyone out there who can help me?