First time using access, should it be this slow?

primary data table is 300,000 entries, it is queried with a reference table of maybe 30 items to normalize the data to what I want to use.

I tried to make the pivot table in excel, and it didnt display column names for the query table... Not sure why.

Just tooling around with it in access directly now, and its been thinking for about 10minutes, just trying to add the first row field to it...

300,000 isnt a small number, but I have to figure its peanuts compared to some databases... Is this normal? When/if it respondes I still have more fields to implement... should I expect a 30min wait for each new modification?

Its a fairly new I5 desktop. I went to access thinking it would be faster, not slower.

closed access out and tried excel again, excel was able to import the data and create a pivot table.

Little concerned about its reliability... but I guess itll work for now.

normalization is basicly the whole issue of the project. Funneling data from 10 different sources, each refering to the same set of items, but called slightly different things...

I spent 3 hours today just trying to create a reference sheet to hopefully be able to get them to communicate with each other.

Ive never fooled with access before, and I dont think its going to work out :/ the info comes in by excel, and the conversion to a common form is rather time consuming, first importing it, then setting up relationships and running a query... Im not sure how much of it needs to be repeated or what might reapply if I update the excel sheets to new data.

The wonders of large corporations with disconnected departments all doing their own thing and no one wanting to assimilate to someone elses standard.

it may be my inexperience failing me, but I dont think the data will work for that. I dont think its a typical database type thing.

1 list is shipping data, used to calculate average delivery times for products based on last months shipping details, thats some 300,000 items each listed by product name, shipping origination, destination, serial number, and the transit time. Run a pivot table on that to get it broken down by product/origin/destination, and pull average and STdev.

Then there is the forecast of weekly production for the coming month.

Applying last months transit statistics to this months sales forecast gets the desired estimate of the units in transit at month end.

Of course the production forecast, and the shipping log call the products different things, as well as different legends for origin and destination.

Thats just a tiny piece of it.

The purpose of the project is to make things as fluid as possible... I mean, we have a working model, its just very delicate, it doesn't communicate between files at all, it requires the user to manipulate the files to make them update. It seems like so far, anything involving access talking to excel is a nightmare of linking where you are never sure if everything flows through... Might just be me using it wrong... I was getting very fustrated getting errors every 2 sec because I had access open while excel was open and vice versa.