Hi Shaun!
I am joking of course so don't take it the wrong way!
Do you have shares in Microsoft ? The way You promote Excel, one would come to the conclusion that you do. There is nothing wrong with Excel, or any other speadsheet for that matter, they do an excellent job, if you use them for what they were designed for. Which is to provide a quick look at the current situation in a business environment including charts etc. But they certainly never were designed to do serious database work. I understand you never bought commercial horseracing software, but if you did you would have realised that none of them use a spreadsheet, and for obvious reasons. Seriously. If you spent half as much time learning a programming language, as you do struggling with a speadsheet you would have all the databases at your disposal (since all programming languages have direct acces to practically all databases) you could easily convert htm files into database files etc. I can't say which would be better for you but VB (Visual Basic) is a great start. Do not go for C++ or C# or any of the more complex ones, they are unforgiving, VB does most of what they do and does it in style.
Just food for thought, though, take it or leave it.
I offered this advice in good spirit and if you decide to take the plunge you can always rely on me for help.
Cheers Marcus.