Excel has some real limitations with large datasets and multiple users accessing it. It's far better to use something like Access or SQL for these purposes. It's also nicer in access when creating a form for people to use that pulls data from multiple input tables. For smaller data sets or sharing access quickly Excel is a champ and even when it fails it tends to try to do so gracefully. VBA does add a great amount of usefulness and is wonderful as an entry scripting language.