What exactly are you needing to do with hyperlinks?

Follow Hyperlink shows how to open external files

Hyperlinks shows how to work with (and why it's better not to) work with hyperlink fields

What we're doing is legislation oversight.  I was hoping my database would bring the bills into the database and then my team goes over each with a fine-tooth comb, The database will store comments and voting of each team member.
I understand the complexities, but we do work with other websites that have links to the legislation.  Do you want examples?
How are they able to do this?  Wouldn't a link be better than a copy?

> bring the bills into the database
Are these webpages / PDFs / an API?

If you can break it down into a generic process,
i.e. There's a webpage with info i want, I need to scrape it and store it in my database
Or there's a website with info on that i know wont change so I can add a link to it as a reference in my db.

The later.  We will make no changes to the links, it merely holds the doc so (in my mind) my database doesn't need to store info from most of the links but at the press of a button the team member pulls it for review.  If they want to mark it up they can copy it into Word, for the most part.  There is a 'summary' of the bill I would like to store in database from a link but its still info only, so there's about four links I'd like to use if I can.  This is all a work in progress.  Right now I'm just trying to find my options.

Rebecca, I think we're getting closer, but I still need a little more detail about exactly what you're working with.

When you say "links," what do those links point to? Are they PDF files, Word documents, regular web pages, or something else? If you could post one or two example URLs (assuming they're public), that would help a lot.

Also, what do you want Access to do when someone clicks the button?

* Simply open the document for them to read?
* Download a copy into your database or onto their PC?
* Extract information (like the bill summary) and store that in your database?

Those are all possible, but they're handled differently.

For example, if they're just PDF files on a government website, the easiest solution may be to store the URL in your database and let Access open it with a button. If later you decide you want to automatically download the PDF or extract text from it, that's possible too, but it's a different process.

The more you can describe the workflow ("A user clicks this, then I want Access to do that..."), the easier it'll be to point you in the right direction.

Thank you for the questions.  When you're pulling legislation documents off of a government website, in Oklahoma, we're talking about 4000 +/- bills each year, some thousands of pages.  I'd like to point you to two websites as examples.
https://www.oklegislature.gov/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=hb1504&Session=2600
This is government.  I can view and listen in on committee hearings but I CANNOT make any changes to anything.  These are bills that are going through the process to become law.

https://legiscan.com/OK/text/HB1504/id/3278762
This is a website that monitors all 50 states and it pulls information from the governments website.  It tracks the committee hearings and votes.
Without a hyperlink how is Legiscan, automatically pulling links off of the government website?  Although you've convinced me hyperlinks are not the way to go.  I'm watching your work around videos currently.
My team will not duplicate efforts.  We scan the bills and vote each one in support or against the bills then we take that information to the voter to apply pressure.
LOL  That's as non political an explanation as I can give.
My database will fit into a website that shows our activities, how we voted, why we voted, calculations of votes (out of 30 members, 10 approved of the bill and 20 said NO) 67% approval.   Or out of 30, only 20 have voted so 67% so far, etc
Most of my fields will be comments and voting from my members, possibly an area where voters can comment. But with 4000 bills I need to make this as convenient as I can, push a button to see the bill and track the committees.  Sorru to be so long.

Oops  67% is fighting against the bill, not approved

No worries at all. I looked at the first website, and it does not appear to provide direct document links to download. It is mostly lists and bill information, so there was not anything obvious there for Access to pull.

The second site does show PDF documents, but the first thing I got when opening it was a Cloudflare "Are you a robot?" challenge. That is going to be the big obstacle. An Access database cannot answer a Cloudflare challenge, so automatically downloading data or PDFs directly from that site is probably not going to be practical.

LegiScan is likely using a more sophisticated setup - possibly an API, commercial data access, or server-side processes that can work with the source sites. That is quite different from having a desktop Access database follow a link.

For your immediate project, I would keep it simple: store the bill number, session, title, summary, status, and the public URL(s) in your database. Then give the user buttons such as "Open Official Bill Page," "Open Bill Text," or "Open Tracking Page." Access can open those pages in the user's browser without needing to download or scrape anything.

If you need to retain a particular PDF, manually download it to your PC or shared network folder and store the local file path in the database. You can open that with a button as well. It is generally better to store the path than to embed thousands of PDFs inside the Access file, which would make the database grow very quickly.

You can extract text from PDFs and store it in Access if necessary, but I would treat that as a later phase. Get the bill tracking, team votes, comments, and reporting working first. With 4,000 bills per year and 30 reviewers, that alone is a very worthwhile project.

Or possibly look to see if there is an API that you can get access to.

Okay, I knew we did not want to pull from Legiscan.  Let me continue watching videos and try to absorb all of this.  It makes sense.
To make this even more of a challenge, our session begins in February, and we have until May to complete it all.  After May, all is deleted and we prepare to start all over the next February.
I appreciate your help.

You're welcome. That actually makes the case even stronger for keeping the first version simple and focused on your workflow.

I would not delete the prior session's data, though. Mark each bill with a SessionID or SessionYear and archive it. You may need to look back later to see how a bill was handled, compare legislation from one year to another, or document your group's history. Storage for the bill records, votes, comments, and URLs will be tiny compared with storing PDFs.

Build the core pieces first: Bills, Members, Votes, and Comments, with links that open the official bill pages in the browser. Once that is working, you can add reports, percentages, public website output, and any automation later. One step at a time - you've got a pretty ambitious project, but it is absolutely the kind of thing Access can help organize.