John,
Having done a data transfer recently I can tell you that it is not an easy task. It depends on how much data you have and how complicated are relationships between your tables. It is a straightforward process to export and then import a flat table. However you will likely need to edit an exported table if you have a reference attribute. Note, if you open a csv file in Excel and some of your data start with '0', Excel will remove the preceding zero. Another potential problem is with long numbers, like a credit card number stored as a string. Excel will convert it to a scientific notation.
Good luck
greg