Lil,
I understand your frustration. I set one up myself last year, so I vaguely remember the learning curve.
Fortunately, you will get it working soon I am sure.
The beauty of it all is that once you get it working, unless you have a reason to change something you never have to adjust it again. You just keep putting in hulls and wads and powder and primers and shot and out come loaded shotgun shells. My 10 year old sometimes loads for me. It is that simple.
For me, for smokeless anyway, I use one hull style, one wad, one charge weight, one powder, one shot weight. The only thing I ever vary is the shot size. I never have to touch anything.
If I want to load BP, I remove the smokeless powder bottle and simply use the MEC to reprime and drop shot. I drop powder with a Lyman 55 BP measure, stuff fiber and cardboard wads in with a wooden dowel, and roll crimp on my drill press.
A suggestion that I got from someone, someplace on the internet, is to put a metal baking pan between the press and the loading bench. Shot seems to dribble out here and there for various reasons (like filling or swapping the shot bottle for instance). The pan will contain most of the mess.
Rick