Suggestions for Excel / Access interaction?

Here's the relevant info about my next project...

a) I have a 875mb+ stationary Access file which contains 2007-08 cust/prod info... its currently about 500k records/rows, maybe 50-60 fields/columns...

b) I also get bi-monthly Excel spreadsheets, generated by a 3rd party program/database... the reports should always be under 1k rows, 25 columns... the file sizes should always be under 500kb...

I need to interact my Excel files with this Access database and pull additional data into the Excel file... we'll make the assumption that the primary key tying the two reports together would be the product serial number...

Initially, I was thinking there is some type of VLOOKUP functionality that can be written into an Excel macro... but then thought theres probably some limitation to how many records/rows that Excel can access and process through...

then I thought about the opposite logic of somehow using an Access query to load the Excel spreadsheet and make the necessary associations... but then how to spit out the final results back into an Excel format? would the original Excel file somehow be able to be utilized?

My Access knowledge is limited, but I can be a quick study... can someone throw me a bone as to what I should start reading up on... to be able to get this thing done? even if its just a basic checklist of how it might be done?

Hey

have a look at this site

http://www.4tops.com/excelimport.htm

hope this helps.