I must respectfully disagree with both of you. Well, disagree, anyway.

In this particular case, the presentation is as important, possibly more important, than the data itself. I can't do the kind of conditional formatting with a database that this spreadsheet provides. There are twelve different scenarios or combinations thereof that control twelve different cell background colors depending on who has read the book, the source, the type of book, etc. (Column I summarizes these.)

Now I must confess that I am far more familiar with Excel (as Bitt suggested, Excel is definitely my "hammer") than I am with, say, Microsoft Access. I've poked around a bit in Access, but haven't explored it thoroughly. Does Access have the same sort of conditional formatting power that Excel has? Even it it has, there would be little advantage in using a relational database program to manage a flat-file database. I mean, why set up relational tables to handle, for example, the "Media" data which consists of only two data types?

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that Excel is only for making mathematical calculations. It is far more powerful and versatile than that.

tanstaafl.