A 'fancy' form  is so named because you can be as elaborate and fancy with its design as you wish. With the 'Simple Form', the variables must be in Column A and the data you wish to export to a data record must be in Column B. With 'fancy forms' the data, the captions, the validation and look-up tables can be anywhere.

   The 'drawback' (if that is the proper term) to 'fancy forms' is that the name for the Instant Database variables do not derive from a list of variables in Column A. Rather, variable names derive from the names that you have assigned to the various cells which contain the variables' values.

   Their 'strength' is everything else. Because you are not limited in where you place any data-carrying cell, you have much more flexibility in the design of your forms. The user input can occur in any cell and the label that introduces a cell can be as descriptive as you want (in terms of text, layout, indenting or spacing). There are simply no design constraints.

   If you are likely to use Excel for generating your Instant Database records, you should seriously consider 'fancy' forms.

   The remainder of this section of the Manual will be focused on the creation and design of these forms.