Excel is like a pickup truck.

Access is like a freight train.

Man is it ever handy to have a pickup truck! You can throw just about anything in the back. You can throw lots of *different* things in the bed without spending too much time worrying about how you stack them. You could have a basket of laundry right next to a lawnmower and five gallons of gas.

A freight train has specific cars for each thing you're planning on transporting. Want to carry fuel or other liquids? The train has tanker cars for gas, and food-grade tankers for milk. Need to move a couple hundred head of cattle? We've got livestock cars for that job.

You can go pretty fast in that little pickup. Now, if you've really loaded it down and start taking hair-pin turns, you know what will happen: your lawnmower bounces into the back window, the laundry basket tips over, gas spills on your clothes, and the basket flies out the back. If you're super careless, you might flip the entire truck over! On the other hand, the pickup can take you just about anywhere. You don't really need to plan too far in advance, just load and go.

It takes more forethought to load a train. But, wow! Done properly that train can move an incredible amount of stuff! The train will always get to where it's supposed to go. Unlike the truck, the train needs to be placed on tracks that are laid in advance. Yes, that involves a great deal of effort and planning, but once it's done, one conductor and locomotive can move as much as a thousand pickup trucks… hell, the train can move the pickups themselves! The cost to move each item is far less because you're moving such huge quantities. With all the planning, your freight will always arrive unharmed.

It's easy to get a license to drive a pickup. Anybody can do it with almost no training. Hop in and start driving, baby!

Not just anyone can drive a train. You've got to be specially trained to understand how it all works. The engine room has mysterious knobs, dials and levers. It's hard to tell just by looking at them what each one does. But, once you get used to the controls, driving a train is easy — you've already laid the track, right?

So… there you have it. Excel is like a pickup and Access is like a freight train.

As for the specifics of how each works… that's a different question. :-)