Access does understand a number of popular file formats, including many other database and spreadsheet program formats, like Lotus, Paradox, dBase, etc. If you know the program that created the data file, try to import the data using the appropriate file definition. Open a database, oir create a blank one for the purpose, then go to File, Get External Data, Import. The default is the Access file type, but you can select among others. If, for instance, your data is in a dBase 5 database format, you would select that file type instead.
Text files are very basic, and can be understoof by any database or spreadsheet program.
The downside is that such files cannot preserve much more than the raw data, so you need to provide additional information during the importing process. The whole file is much larger, of course. You can download it from here if you want to try it out. With a database opened, into which you want to import your text data file, you go to File, Get External Data, Import, and select Text Files as your file type. Then click the Import button.