Very little Access experience -- Need to keep newest or last line of information whil

[Jennaw]

I have very little Access experience, but I know this can be done.. just not how.

My table has 14 columns
-ID, Company Name, Agency ID, Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial, Field 8, Optional 1, Optional 2, Date Submitted, coursed, Course Status, Last Accessed

ID, Company Name, Agency ID, Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial, Field 8, Optional 1, Optional 2, and Date Submitted stay the same for a particular set (???). For example:

ID - 1
Company Name - Smallville
Company ID - 111
Agency ID - 00000012345
Last Name - Washington
First Name - George
Middle Initial - (none)
Field 8 - wash1234
Optional 1 - (none)
Optional 2 - (none)
Date Submitted - 30-Apr-2013
courseid - Course
Course Status - Completed
Last Accessed - 28-Jul-08

The differences are in courseid, Course Status, and Last Accessed are generally different.

George Washington has 7 lines of data, while Ronald Reagan has 2 lines of data and Lincoln could have 5. I am working with a total of about 2000 names with each have multiple entries. I need to sort my data to keep the newest Last Accessed date field for each person.

If it helps, the newest Last Accessed date is always the last line of the persons information. So if records 1-6 are George Washington then record six is his most recent, if Ronald Reagan is records 7-9 then record 9 is his most recent, and if Lincoln is records 10-14 then 14 is his most recent.

Any help is greatly appreciated and with my limited knowledge I'll probably need pretty detailed help.

Blessings, Jenna

[PhilOfWalton]

Well to start you off, I would suggest 2 tables, the first Table Companies to hold the fixed data, so that's everything down to DateSubmitted. While were on the subject, avoid spaces in field names because if Access comes across Company Name it will assume that Company is the field name, and won't have the foggiest idea what to do with the next word -"Name". If you insist on spaces you will always have to put square brackets round the field name thus [Company Name]
Alternatives are Company_Name or my preference is CompanyName. Don't forget the tables should never be seen, and the label on the form can say whatever you like.
Sorry to go on but give all fields a meaningful name. Field 8 looks as if it a Zip Code, if so, call it ZipCode. Equally not very happy about Optional 1 and 2. Equally ID should be CustomerID
Enough.
Second table "Courses" should have
CustomerID, CourseID, CourseStatus and LastAccessed.
You the end up with a main form for the Customers, with a Subform showing the course information.
You will end up with 1 table holding your 2000 customers with CustomerID (as an AutoNumber) running roughly from 1 to 2000 and the Courses Table with the total number of courses. You will need to set up a relationship between the 2 tables on CustomerID.
Depending precisely what information you want, there are lots of queries that can be generated from this data.

Phil