Somewhat. At the core of Access, there are tables which are easily
transferrable to Excel. Limitations are that Access can store MANY more
records/rows than Excel (pre-2007) can hold. To check, open up the Access
tables, and see how many records there are. (note that its from here you can
easily select all data, copy, and paste into XL)
Typically, Access is used when dealing with large amount of records, or if
you need lots of interactions/relations between the tables. But, with enough
time and effort, (and again, provided not too many records) you could setup
an XL workbook that does the same things. It just might not be as efficient.