MS Applications

How much is possible in the automation of a db as PHP would, such as automatically running through ID’s and assigning them out equally to another unique id of another table.

I only have access to MS applications such as excel and access. I believe I can us vba script but again not sure of its limitation compared to PHP for handling requests such as that. Also don’t know where I would begin.

Additionally, can VBA access the file system? If I have a folder of pdfs could I possible populate a db based on the names of the pdfs?