I am a constant bettor of soccer and have been using Excel as a database for the last 4 years. I have results and stats for over 71,000 games. This is not a problem but I have another spreadsheet that assesses certain selections and then calculates all sorts of stats across the entire width of the spreadsheet ( to column "IV") and down 10,000 lines, which is only enough to get me through to the end of this year.

Originally these two spreadsheets were in the same file (size 77mb) but I have had to split them up so that this assessment sheet is by itself (size 52mb).

There are a few other files that this one is linked to and this large one takes the best part of 2 minutes to open even though I have a 3.62 GHz processor.

With a file this large it takes a while for it to re-calc after each piece of data entry (approx 20 - 30 secs) in each cell, unless I turn "auto-calc" off and re-do at the end.

I am currently 3 and half weeks into betting the best selections that the stats that this "database" has revealed for upcoming games and have obtained a strike rate of 76.92% at $1.6372 avg div (26 sel/20 wins) in this time.

From these stats, I am keen to keep it going, and going well and fast, and for longer than one year.

The question I need to ask is, am I better off using Access or this SQL I have heard about?

I do not know anything about SQL but every attempt that I have made in the past to use Access leaves me dumbfounded. I find it very hard to learn and, unfortunately, do not have it on this PC.

Anyone's experience and suggestions in this matter would be greatly appreciated.