MDB Viewer Plus - About

MDB Viewer Plus is a freeware viewer plus editor for opening Microsoft Access MDB and ACCDB database files. It does not need to be installed to run. It uses Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) which is installed as part of Windows.

MDB Viewer Plus has been written to provide a free, quick and easy way to open, view, edit, filter, sort, import to, export from, modify and search MDB and ACCDB files. This is useful for software developers like myself who use Access databases as a backend database for their bespoke software. MDB Viewer Plus provides a convenient way to view and edit these databases. The table info screen even has the ability to copy the list of field names in a table to the clipboard. A developer can then paste this list into their source code for direct access.

What are MDB / ACCDB files ?

MDB and ACCDB files are Microsoft Access Database files. ACCDB is the newer format to the original MDB file. Both Accdb and MDB files can be opened with MDB Viewer Plus.

Opening MDB and ACCDB Files

MDB Viewer Plus can be used to open MDB files and Accdb files without having Access installed. It will also use workgroup files if specified in the open options. Workgroup files (MDW) can be specified using the open options.

If you need to open and view many MDB files frequently. You can associate MDB and Accdb files with MDB Viewer Plus so that they open with MDB Viewer Plus when you double click on then in explorer.

If you are always using the same MDB or ACCDB file, you can create a shortcut on your desktop to MDB Viewer Plus and specify the MDB file as a runtime parameter.

How to open Accdb files

To open an ACCDB file select "ACCDB files" from the drop down box on the open dialog labelled "Files of type:" then select your Accdb. Note that if you don't have Access 2007 or higher installed you will need to install the Microsoft Access 2007/2010 database engine first as a prerequisite. You can download the Access 2007 database engine from Microsoft's website.

If you do not have the Access Database Engine installed you will receive and error "Provider can't be found ..."

For more details on the different ways of how to open MDB files, see the MDB Viewer Plus user guide.

MDB Viewer Plus Feature List:

• Can open MDB and Accdb files.
• Table opening, viewing and inline editing.
• Tabbed interface.
• Standard search and partial word search.
• Filtering / sorting records by fields.
• Table and query result printing.
• Record view (form style view).
• Record count.
• Query - standard SQL select statements.
• Opening and saving of SQL statements to file.
• Table Info (field types) plus printing of structure.
• Table types.
• Portable; no installation required to run. (Provided MDAC is already installed as part of Windows)
• Exports to TXT, HTML, XML, DBF, XLS, WKS, RTF and PDF.
• Import from CSV,TXT,Doc,XLS,WK1,WQ1,SAV,DB,DBF,MDB,ADO,ADT,DAT,HTM,XML,WAB and VCS.
• Support Access 2007 Accdb files (Provided "Microsoft Office Access database engine 2007" is installed).
• Unicode compatible.
• Create new blank database.
• Create / rename / delete table.
• Set / change / remove password.
• Support for Workgroup Files (MDW).
• Display related child table link to the parent table.
• Add / remove / rename / alter fields.
• Customisable many to many relationship dialog.
• Selective opening of tables.
• Add / Remove index.

Different Languages for MDB Viewer Plus

MDB Viewer Plus is currently being developed to support additional languages. It will make use of a language.lng file which is simply a text file laid out in the same format as an INI file. Each section in the file represents a different screen in MDB Viewer Plus. To translate all you have to do is type in you language equivalent to the English.

How it will be implemented in MDB Viewer Plus has not been finalised. In some dialogs the non English version might be displayed adjacent to the current English label. On other screen the non English text might just be displayed as a hint caption.

As I don't speak any other languages other that English I will be using online language translation tools to translate the words. If you speak multiple languages you can make the corrections in the files if you wish to do so.