Access and Excel are different entities altogether, so the memory will not be the same.
Access has to create Table schemas, relationships, etc.
To keep the database size as small as possible, here are some things that may help:
- chosen the most efficient data-types for your table fields (i.e. don't use Long Integer or Double is something smaller will suffice, limit the size of text fields, etc)
- make sure that your tables are normalized so that you do not have a lot of blank fields in your tables (sometimes more tables is actually better)
- don't go too crazy and create too many unnecessary indexes
- run Compact & Repair occasionally to reduce database bloating