Opening mdb file on Mac

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rockloper
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Joined: Tue Dec 01, 2009 2:41 am

Opening mdb file on Mac

Post by rockloper »

I downloaded an mdb file and can't find a way to open it. I'm told it can be done with open office but I don't know how. OpenOffice 3.0.0
Mac OS X 10.4.11

Thanks
OpenOffice3.0.0
Mac OS X 10.4.11
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Villeroy
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Re: Opening mdb file on Mac

Post by Villeroy »

No application on any system "opens" mdb. Not even Access does that. Access uses some driver to read from a mdb file analog to a file system.
Micorosoft publishes tools for its own operating system, so database tools can read and write stored row sets with the help of drivers like MS Access can read and write other vendors databases with appropriate drivers provided. Under Windows you install that set of MS drivers and connect your database tool of choice to work with it.
Microsoft will never publish anything like that operating systems other than Windows, even if they could do so within days. They don't do it for strategic reasons and one should always respect those decisions and avoid all proprietary technologies where possible.
For Linux there is a set of tools to dump your own data from mdb into text files, so you can rebuild a new database and fill it with your own property locked into the mdb file. The team which tried to develop a Linux driver for direct read and write access (of course without any support from MS) apparently gave up after months of hard work since their last product destroyed some databases sometimes. For MS this would be almost zero effort but they will not do it.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
Ubuntu 18.04 with LibreOffice 6.0, latest OpenOffice and LibreOffice
rockloper
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 01, 2009 2:41 am

Re: Opening mdb file on Mac

Post by rockloper »

So does this mean I'm out of luck? As you can tell, I'm not to computer savvy.
OpenOffice3.0.0
Mac OS X 10.4.11
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Villeroy
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Re: Opening mdb file on Mac

Post by Villeroy »

You can "open" the database on a Windows system with MS Access and export all the table data to text files or spreadsheets. Don't forget to use the self-reporting tool in Access which can document the whole structure and functionality of the database.
Then start again with a new database structure from scratch where you finally import the contents from the text files.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
Ubuntu 18.04 with LibreOffice 6.0, latest OpenOffice and LibreOffice
HIMike
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Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2009 12:22 am

Re: Opening mdb file on Mac

Post by HIMike »

I have the same issue. I share an MS Access database between my Windows computer at work and my Mac at home. I was hoping to avoid buying MS Office so I tried OpenOffice here, but apparently I can't use the MS Access database on my Mac since I can't create a data source connection to it. I need to be able to send these back to other Windows users from time to time, so a one-time export/conversion isn't so attractive an option. Looks like I'm purchasing MS Office.
OpenOffice 3.1.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard)
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