MS Access - Help setting up basic form

[ctwo]

I've forgotten some basics of using Access, so wondering if anyone here has some familiarity setting up a form for logging times?

For example, I have a spreadsheet that lists motorcycles in the first column, and then each following column head lists a track. Each cell then contains a (best) lap time, for example. The far right column and bottom row each has a sum total of the row or column data.

What I did was create a table of motorcycles, then a table of tracks.

Now I need to insert the magic that makes the form work to tally up the numbers. I'm mostly looking for some higher level strategy on how to approach this, but at the moment I cannot quite figure out what relationship (between tables) should be defined and then if I should make a query or just build the form data from the fields I have. It seems I don't have any place to store all the data, however, so I wonder if I need to make a comprehensive table like in Excel.

 

[Yakoo752]

Why Access?

How many users?

Is a form necessary?

Are you extracting data from a logger? Scraping from a website/app?

Do you have distinct tables? What are they?
I can imagine; Rider information, bike information, track information, track times. Primary key is the racers #.

I'm not a dba, I just play in them. Probably much smarter IT people in here then I.

 

[ctwo]

Currently it is an Excel spreadsheet with bikes x tracks, and riders enter this information from a network, so file locking is an issue and people cannot enter data into the right cell.

Access will provide record locking, which could be by user, and a form will get them entering data into the right person's record, and hopefully the DB will be more stable than Excel - less fragile anyway.

I built a table just like the spreadsheet and used a sum total row and calculated fields for the last two columns, then made a form for that. So it may work as-is...

It's going to get more complicated, because it's going to be multiple lap times and now a blank spreadsheet is placed for each data entry event. I guess with a DB, you could just spit the data out in a report and then have a admin clear data record. Also, calculated fields are no good because riders and tracks change, so that is a lot of hard coding.

It's for someone else - I stopped developing in Access a while back, and so far it has reminded me why!