Thanks for all that - I'll pass it on in digest form! And as for our "developer" - 'tis merely the Head of Research. (Who is, incidentally, leaving at the end of July, as her husband's UK contract is coming to an end, so she's heading back to Oz.)

Shortcut advice worked a treat (although I had to reiterate part of it - don't forget those quotes when passing the location strings of the files - and beware the hidden . extensions courtesy of looking at it through Windows. I was using dir in a DOS box, so spotted that one!)

It's already running with an SQL backend. As for coding, well, she doesn't really know any VB, so I believe that all the automation at the Access end has been put together with Macros - and left as Macros. I've used .mde's to idjit-proof my databases before - but I don't think that she knows about them.

I'll look into the possibility including the copy function into the login script for the volunteers - fortunately they share profiles, as they have very limited permissions anyway.

Thanks for the offer - you may well find that it returns to bite savage you wildly.