Norie,
Yes dropping the column would remove the data.
So, depending on what is really required and whether or not the column is already populated will influence what should be done.
MsAccess doesn't seem to support
Alter Table RENAME ...
If you have several tables, queries, modules etc, you will probably need to do impact analysis to see what uses the Column in question.
You can add a new column (with a different name) then copy the data from the old column to the new column, then drop the old column. However, if other queries, modules etc use the original column name, these would have to be changed to reflect the new name.