Dumb Question Alert? - Lists vs Not-Lists

Could someone explain when a table is or is NOT a list of items? Would really help me understand how the data, types etc. work. thanks !!

List of items relate to a field within a table.

So, of for example you had a classified item you were selling, you might allow the user to add several pictures to that classified item, in which case you would have a field images and set it to type of image and is a list.

You can also make complex types. For example; you might have a table that stores Companies, Company would be a Type, under that type, you may have a number of contacts for that Company. You could then create another table/dataype called CompanyContact. which would have fields name, phone number etc.

On the Company table, you would then have a field Contact which would be a list of CompanyContact.

This is still a mystery to me… Am I wrong to think of lists as a group to choose from? For instance access has the ability to “lookup” data in another table?

If you think of a table with simple non-list fields then it is a flat structure, i.e. you could write out on a bit of paper, one line per row of data, with each field value being a new column, like an excel spreadsheet.

If you change one of the fields to a list of another type, you can now see how the data structure become mores complex.