mdbtools

read Microsoft Access (.mdb, .accdb) databases on Unix

TLDR

List the tables in a database

$ mdb-tables [database.mdb]

Export a table to CSV on stdout

$ mdb-export [database.mdb] [tablename]

Dump the entire schema as SQL DDL

$ mdb-schema [database.mdb]

Count rows in a table

$ mdb-count [database.mdb] [tablename]

Open an interactive SQL prompt

$ mdb-sql [database.mdb]

Dump every table to a directory of CSVs

$ for t in $(mdb-tables -1 [database.mdb]); do mdb-export [database.mdb] "$t" > "$t.csv"; done

Convert to a SQLite database

$ mdb-schema [database.mdb] sqlite | sqlite3 [out.db] && for t in $(mdb-tables -1 [database.mdb]); do mdb-export -I sqlite [database.mdb] "$t" | sqlite3 [out.db]; done

SYNOPSIS

mdb-tables [-1] databasemdb-schema [options] database [backend]mdb-export [options] database tablenamemdb-sql [options] databasemdb-count database tablename

mdbtools is a suite of utilities for reading Microsoft Access databases on Unix-like systems without requiring the Microsoft Jet or ACE engine. Each tool is a separate binary that operates on a single .mdb or .accdb file: mdb-tables lists tables, mdb-schema prints DDL, mdb-export dumps rows, mdb-sql runs queries, mdb-count counts rows, mdb-prop lists object properties, and mdb-ver shows the Access version stored in the file.Typical workflows are migration (export every table to CSV or to another RDBMS using -I backend) and inspection (running SELECTs from mdb-sql). The suite also ships a libmdb library that GUI tools and the mdb-export ODBC driver use under the hood.

PARAMETERS

DATABASE

Microsoft Access database file (.mdb for Jet/Access 97-2003, .accdb for Access 2007+).

mdb-tables [-1]

List tables; -1 prints one name per line for shell iteration.

mdb-schema backend

Dump SQL CREATE statements; backend selects dialect (access, sybase, oracle, sqlite, postgres, mysql).

mdb-export [-I backend] [-d delim] [-q quote]

Export a single table. -I emits INSERT statements for the given backend; otherwise CSV.

mdb-sql

Open an interactive SQL prompt supporting a subset of SQL92.

mdb-count

Print the number of rows in a table.

CAVEATS

Read-only: mdbtools cannot create or modify Access databases. Some advanced features (encrypted files, certain index types, complex linked tables, attachment columns, multi-value fields) are partially or not supported. Older releases struggled with .accdb files; mdbtools 1.0 (2021) added robust .accdb support, so always prefer recent versions.

HISTORY

mdbtools was started by Brian Bruns in 2000 and stalled until Evan Miller revived the project in 2014. The 1.0 release in 2021 brought up-to-date .accdb support, a packaged libmdb API, and an actively maintained ODBC driver.