Searchable Excel Workbook Database

Hello all,

I've always received a lot of help from this forum, despite my ignorance. I'm hoping for another lightning strike, because I'm desperately in need of a solution.

I have an old excel database that is used for tracking incoming and out-going customer tools. It's huge, clunky, and badly formatted.

What I would ultimately love to turn this database into is the following:

An Excel workbook with a template on the first page, that saves data entered into it on a new sheet. So every shipment of tools would have a new sheet created, based off of the data entered into the template on the front page. This should be easily searchable using the "search workbook" function (or even better, a search function built into the template or splash / welcome page), and therefore we could update what I call the database (I'm sure it's not really a database, but I don't know what else to call it) by going to the tool shipment's sheet and changing the information there.

We often get 100-150 tools per shipment that need tracking. Our inventory software (Fishbowl Inventory) doesn't provide any way of tracking the volume of tools we get in, or of sorting what has been finished and what still needs work. Really, the data required is very simple, and as I said, we're making do with a monsterous spreadsheet right now. However, if I could clean it up with a macro or database that seperates the shipments out by placing each shipment on a seperate sheet, and updating a few key fields, our work load would be 1000x easier.

I am able to create the template, but I do not have the knowledge or skills to create a code or macro to have the template export the information entered into a new sheet. If anyone would be willing to help me, I would be more than happy to work up a basic layout.

Thanks for reading.

- Edit

I forgot one other thing. The searchable part in the headline refers to the following:

Once a tool is completed, I'd like to have a checkbox or something similar that indicates that. If it's possible, it would be great if we could search for only open tools, or only tools that have been completed, by customer name.

So say my customer calls and asks how many open tools we have for him, I can search for open tools and the customer name, and be rewarded with a list of sheets that I need to print out.

I guess I should list the search terms that I would like to use.

Customer Name
Open or Closed
Date Range
Refurbish or Clean and Test
ID Number
Manufacturer
Shipping Method
Tool Type

Just to be clear, I really have no idea if this is a colossal amount of work, or relatively simple. So if I'm asking for something ridiculously complicated, then please let me know and I will try to find another solution. It's already been suggested to me that we use another inventory software, but using two different inventory systems would really screw up our warehouse and receiving people, and we're pretty entrenched in the one we have. Also, it works great for every application save for this one.