PHP/MS Access Question

Answer 1

Note: Additional details provided here by poster have been moved to the question

Answer 2

You should look into CROSSTAB (Pivot) queries in MS Access for this. Once you understand the concept behind the CROSSTAB, MS Access has a query wizard that can build the query for you.

Answer 3

I'd suggest you put all the employees in one table:

| employee_id  |  employee_name | employee_other_fields  |
+--------------+----------------+------------------------+
| 001          | employee_one   | whatever else you need |

Clients in one table:

| client_id    |  client_name   | client_other_fields    | 
+--------------+----------------+------------------------+
| 001          | client_one     | whatever else you need |

And possibly a lookup-table to link the clients to employees, though you might consider just using a foreign key in the clients table, if you're sure there will never be, or could never be, a many-to-many relationship between clients and employees.

I imagine that the huge number of queries is a result of the table-per-employee design, whereas the three-table scheme should allow for simple -small and fast- queries (certainly relative to the existing structure). Obviously this might not work for your use, especially if it requires a lot of conversion and re-entry of data, so I'd suggest converting a sample quantity to the three-table format -or any other scheme suggested in the answers- and test whether or not the cost in time of changing the system is recouped by the efficiency/improvements of any change.