re: Excel tips: How to populate cells after locking other cells

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of Access unless you have an extremely large amount of data/tables you're trying to link. For small data collection, I'm more in favor of using the forms within excel. They can function very similar to some Access functions.

The template in Access will probably the best place to start rather than going from a blank slate.

How complex do you want it to be? What did you have in mind?

I think this could be done simply and neatly in Excel (plus it's what I know much better). If I knew what you had in mind for the overall look/functionality, I could point you in the right direction.