Reading data stored in Access without importing it to Excel?

Hey,

Is there a way to have my formulas reference a table in Access without storing that data in Excel? I did have all the data stored in my Workbook but after 150,000 rows Excel just crashes. I now have the data stored in Access but when I link Excel to it, it just copies the data back to excel and I'm in the same position.

If you have 2 Excel workbooks open, as you know when typing a formula you can simply click in a different Excel sheet and the formula will link to that and read that data. Is that possible from Excel to Access?

=SUMIF(A:A,'spreadsheet1'A1,B:B) as a quick example. Can i simply replace spreadsheet 1 with an Access table?

I'm comfortable with Excel but clearly I know very little about Access.

Thanks in advance for any help

Ok, thanks for the help.