Microsoft Access (much as I shudder to recommend a MS product) is probably exactly what he's looking for.
He can design the fields however he wants them. It integrates flawlessly with Excel. It has extensive reporting skills. And once he learns it, it's very user-friendly.
Problem with Access newbies (though it's true of new users of databases in general) is that they try to treat the database like a spreadsheet. It's not. It's not built for calculations and grids, it's built for record-and-field oriented data storage and retrieval.
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