Hi -- Thanks for the input.  In thinking about what you
said, at first I thought you were right, but on thinking
through building a solution along the lines of what you
had said I again came upon the same problem.  Let me tie
it down to specifics so that it is more clear.  Here is
the problem:

    I have a table a table called 'Sales'.  Every entry
in the table represents one credit card sale -- One
charge on someones CC, one transaction with the credit
card company.  In the data associated with a sale I want
to record (at least) the ID of each product that was sold
in that CC transaction.  I know the data type of an ID
(an int), but I don't know, at design time, how many
product ID's I will need to record.  Now what I was
thinking based on your comment, was, okay, I just create
a new table, whose record type is a Product ID (int), and
then have as many entries in that new table as I need.  
The problem with this solution is that we have pushed off
one problem by creating a new one.  The new problem is
that I now don't know how many tables I have in my
database at design time.  For each Sale, I have to
create, on the fly, a new table.  I am very new to
Access, but that sounds hard.  
    One obvious solution to this problem is that instead
of defining the Product ID entry as an int, I could
define it as an OLE object, specifically an excel spread
sheet, with a collection of product ID's.  I don't like
this solution because it seems that then I lose any built
in type checking, validation etc.  I have no control over
what my users will attach as a spread sheet.  I think.

    Comments, thoughts?

      Thanks for all your help

               Mike