Create a relational Memo field to store comments against a daily report

Hi

I have recently started exploring and learning about Macros and have an idea for a sheet that I regularly work on but I'm not sure of the best approach to achieve my goal, or if its even possible at this stage so would be grateful for some pointers.

The sheet is basically a list of jobs, each with a unique contract number and information relating to the work type, start and finish dates etc. The data from the sheet is an automated data dump from an oracle database which holds all of the contract information. This means that as new jobs are added to the list the sheet grows each time is it output.

I need to regularly place comments against the jobs and currently add a new column to hold these, eg a few notes if there is a delay etc. The problem is however that when I download a new sheet my previous comments are not present and I have to refer to the previous version to see the comments. I typically do this on a weekly basis but in some cases I am adding comments on jobs that are several months in the future and trying to cross reference and find my previous notes is a pain.

I tried using VLOOKUP in a seperate tab with a list of contract numbers but this is a pain having to constantly switch to see the comments and also with regard to the dynamic nature of the source data when new contract numbers are added.

What I would like to achieve is some way to store the comments in a relational way linked to the contract reference so that each time I update the sheet it will populate with the last batch of comments which i can add to and update the relational data.

As an example of the data I am working with

Job Ref Work Type Start Date Finish Date Comments (added each time)
HM-206-01 Internal Redecs 1/4/13 20/4/13 notes ....
LM-136-03 Fire Alarm Upgrade 2/5/13 30/5/13 notes ....
CH-334-12 Window Repairs 4/6/13 15/6/13 notes ....
HM-012-01 Carpet Replacement 3/5/13 20/5/13 notes ....

I am familiar with MS Access and could achieve this fairly simply but unfortunately we do not have MS Access available so I need to find a relational solution in Excel.

Initial thoughts have been that I may need to use 2 Macros. One to import the latest comments in to the sheet when I first download a new version and a second to export the updated comments before I download the next update.

I have also considered the use of forms but this is a new area to me and I dont want to spend a lot of time learning about forms if its either not possible or not the most effecient way of achieving my objective.

Sorry for the long winded post but I hope it gives enough information as to what I am trying to achieve.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Dave