Using tables, lists, and dropdowns and not sure how to make this work…

DianeDennis 

OK, Diane, here's a first pass at a revised workbook. A couple of pointers: in general, all the text books on Excel advise strongly against doing the kind of formatting that you've done on your time sheet--in particular the practice of merging cells, making small columns so as to be able to create small check boxes (or whatever your goal was).....the merged cells across a row can make writing formulas tricky in the first place, but over and above that you'll have all kinds of problems when the time comes to revise.

And definitely don't do fancy formatting before you finish the basic functionality. After it's working, if it makes sense to combine header rows, fine, but don't go overboard even then.

It would also be good for you to do some research on tables. You had created a number of tables but each consisted of one data element. I eliminated those and created them anew as single tables on employees and a single table on projects. A solid table collects all relevant information about a given category--for example, employees. So I've created an employee data base (EE_DB) and it's very easy to write VLOOKUP formulas that access all the data for any given employee from a single entry (I've chosen SSN).

Then there's the matter of data elements in a table and here the cardinal rule is DO NOT COMBINE disparate elements into a single cell/column. Separate identifiers (e.g., SSN) from name; separate first from last name; etc. Excel can easily combine first and last name (to print a paycheck or name card, for example); and it's easy to do first name first for the name card, last name first for an alphabetical list of employees, etc.  

And that applies to addresses too. Definitely don't combine address with name; separate street address (most databases have two lines for street address, to accommodate apartment numbers and the like); separate City from State and ZIP.... and so forth.

I would also separate marital status from number of exemptions.

Try, on the data collection screen (WH347) to collect everything for any given employee's workweek on one line. You'll see I spent quite a bit of time modifying your layout. I didn't finish, figuring I've given you enough pointers on how to design....the remainder should be fairly easy for you. But if you get bogged down or have any questions, by all means come back and ask.