i am aware of linking various tables together but after i have thought of it..this table i am designing is much better off as one table. but......i'm afraid this one table might be too large ... with this database being networked.....i'm afraid of a crash or something.....

to save a nightmare...in the future i was wondering if anyone know from experience if large tables are a bad idea.......thank you.

The limits to the amount of fields in one table is 255. But this can be overcome by using another table with a one to one relationship, this will give you 255 more.
To see the limitions of Access, go to Access Help, search for "Limits", the from the results choose "program". This will show you what you need.

HTH
RDH