Extremely Newbish Question

First off, I've gotta apologise for how totally poor I am with Access. I know very little so please retract your laughter if my methods are completely stupid, haha. Basically, I'm using Access to pretty much automate a medium sized businesses accounts with reports, but on top of that, I'm using queries to search for various entries in the database.

The DB consists of only one table. I was told specifically to do it this way because the owner of the company is useless with Access and believes it's easier this way, even though, to be honest, it'd be easier with a few relational tables. Anywho, in this one table are details regarding Clientele and their Maintenance Contract information. There is one field entitled 'Name' which is where the customers' name is kept, obviously. I was also told specifically to keep Forenames, middle names and Surnames all in this 'Name' field, which quite obviously leads to a few complications.

At the moment I'm using queries to search specific fields. I use a select query and then call on user input to determine the search criteria in a specific field. For example, viewing the select query in design view, there's the field 'Name', then under this field, next to 'Criteria' is "[Input Customer Name]". Upon executing the query, the user then inputs the customer name and results are displayed. Firstly, is this the most sensible and efficient way to search for a customer by their name? Are their easier ways to achieve this?

My second question. Say, for example, I have a record with a value of 'D. Smith' under the 'Name' field. Say after a phone call to this person they've told me their name is 'Mr. Smith', then obviously, if I were to search for his information, I'd input 'Smith' as search criteria upon query execution. However, Mr Smith's details will not be called upon, not unless the exact value 'D. Smith' is inputted. Is there anyway to return data if it part-matches a search criteria? It'd streamline the search process, that's for damn sure.

Sorry for blabbering on, but I'm not down with the ol' Access lingo so I've had to explain stuff in excess to ensure people actually get what I'm trying to say, haha. Cheers for any help in advance, I'd appreciate it. David.