I just thought of something else from way back when.
Do this from the command prompt.
use anytable
copy structure extended to newtable
Take a look at the fields it creates.
Your work table that your users are adding info to should mirror these field layouts (not the data -- the structure "field_name", "Field_type", etc.).
After you add a record to this table, you've really added a complete field description. You put the field name like "Lastname" in the field_name field, etc.
Now, simply issue a CREATE FROM newtable....
command and it will create a new table with the structure you need. These are old commands I haven't used in a long time.