Count Activities/ Increment Tbl field on Button click?

I think it may be easier to understand this by showing you what we're currently using....
In Excel, I have a spreadsheet that is used to keep track of Activities. Something like this:
Date Acct.Mgmnt LicenseSupp. EnableSubs. etc.
11/2/2009
11/3/2009
11/4/2009
11/5/2009
etc.

As it stands, we basically keep a piece of paper on the desk, and everytime you do something, it fits in a category (there are 7 in all) so you use a tally mark to keep track of what you do. Then at the end of the day each employee opens the spreadsheet on the shared drive with their name on it and puts in their numbers. Then management looks at the daily/weekly/monthly totals for each person and as a total sum.

On the form in my db where our work is performed, there are checkboxes and buttons (of course) each of those checkboxes that I check to show that I have done some sort of work on a record correlates to one of these Activity Categories. (All but one category is fully represented, but I can put that as a button on the "switchboard" type main form).

I'm thinking there has to be a way to make a table(?)/datasheet(?) that more or less looks like what I documented above.....maybe make the date the primary key and have it auto incrment(?). Then in the on click events of those buttons/checkboxes I just tell it to increment +1 the corresponding field. Like DLookup where the Date (row) contains Now() and then whatever column that particular button falls under. Then I can just use queries to make a report that shows all the necessary info. Each employee (there are only 7) has their own front end, so I could just change the name of the table it's writing to on each one before I distribute the update. And store a table/datasheet.....whatever I use....on the backend that is named for each person.

The issue: I am lost! I really have no direction. Basically it comes down to I have no idea what features of Access would best fulfill my need.
If anyone has any suggestions of just what feature I should be looking into, or an idea of maybe I different way I can solve this....Please fill me in!!

Keeping these tally marks and having all the Excel sheets is just crazy, time consuming, and kind of stupid if you ask me. Especially when I know there must be a way for Access to just count what you're clicking on or checking.

Thanks in advance!

The reason you are lost is because you continue to think in terms of spreadsheets and paper records. Relational databases are based on entirely different concepts. You absolutely cannot carry over paradigms from spreadsheets to databases.

Database concepts are based on identifying entities which you want to represent, and their attributes. None of these other considerations (how it's written down or displayed) have ANY relevance to the design of a relational database.

If you want to use a relational database to solve a problem, you must begin at the beginning, cast aside ALL your previous concepts, and learn database fundamentals. You might start by reading some online tutorials such as:
http://www.surfermall.com/relational/lesson_1.htm
http://www.geekgirls.com/menu_databases.htm
http://www.tekstenuitleg.net/en/art...cteristics.html
http://www.quackit.com/database/tut...base_design.cfm

I have looked at the links you provided. Thanks.

I thought that by referencing an example of what we're using now, that would help convey an idea of what I was trying to do.

I thought that how the data received from the vba in the checkboxes/buttons was written down was relevant for this purpose. Since I need to be able to calculate totals based on rows, and columns. And I of course don't want it just writing todays date 60 times for each event that is written for today. So I thought that some type of Row name/ID(?) would make it simpler.

My belief was that the more disorganized the data itself is, then the more complex it becomes to retrieve the information. (retrieve/calculate/report on, etc.)