Thursday, September 27, 2007

mdb file in OpenOffice.org

To work with mdb file, open the OpenOffice.org-base select connect to an existing database, select Microsoft Access.


browse the mdb file and you need to save a odb file that will enable you to view the tables,query etc on it.

To copy the content of a table in OpenOffice.org Calc
go to View--> Data Sources


right click in the left pannel of in the database view option, click on the "Registered databases", click "New" and locate your created odb file.


Click on the database you want to copy. Select the Queries/Tables and copy the content by righ click on the query/table name.

Paste in the OpenOffice.org-Calc. Now you can save in ods, and also save as in different formats.

14 comments:

ev45ive said...

ok, nice. But What IF i don't have an "Microsoft Access" Option on the list!?
Maby I'm missing some driver or library?

Question: Where did you get your OO from!?
Can you tell the source (link) and version?

Thx.

salahuddin66 said...

First open OpenOffice.org-base

You should get the Microsoft Access Option there.

If not, you can try with another version/package of OpenOffice.

I was using OpenOffice from official Debian repository.

apt-get install openoffice.org-base

jonsmith said...

I have done apt-get install openoffice-org-base, as you suggest.

It updated / replaced 12 individual packages, including openoffice.org and openoffice.org-base to v2.3

However, when I restarted OO, there still wasn't the Microsoft Access option in "Connect to an existing database..."

In fact, I only have 11 types listed there: MySQL, Oracle JDBC, Adabas D, Spreadsheet, dBASE, Text, JDBC, ODBC, Evolution Local, Groupwise, Evolution LDAP.

I'm pretty sure this was the same list as before I did the apt-get install.

I'd really appreciate your help, if possible. Thanks.

{Here are the final lines of the terminal output, in case it's helpful:

Setting up openoffice.org-core (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...
Setting up openoffice.org-calc (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up python-uno (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-writer (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-draw (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-impress (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-base (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-gtk (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-gnome (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-evolution (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org-math (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

Setting up openoffice.org (1:2.3.0-1ubuntu5.4) ...

}

Christopher Parker said...

I wanted to say thank you for posting this.

One note - You must choose the bottom option: Connect to an existing database (rather than an existing file) - if you are going to get the "Microsoft Access" option. It took a few tries for me to get past that mistake.

fastpagemode said...

Do you happen to know the package names for what I need to get to make OpenOffice work with Access files on Linux? I am using OpenOffice 2.4 on SuSE Linux 11.0 x86_64.

Mine opens up and does not allow for Access -- it's not in the list.

Thomas Nordén said...

Can Open Office save a database in .mdb format?

Like to Bike said...

From an existing Access database, can I still work in this program and utilize my drop-down menus? They don't seem there when I go to insert more survey data and I'm hesistant to put the copy in manually as I think it won't be captured in the results once I'm ready to compile. Follow?

Thanks for the guidance.
April

Chris Perez said...

Thanks a lot, great post.

Bigato said...

Hi guys,

You could also install mdbtools-gmdb for reading-only the mdb files. From the openoffice.org-base description:

OpenOffice.org office suite - database
OpenOffice.org is a full-featured office productivity suite that provides
a near drop-in replacement for Microsoft(R) Office.

This package contains the database component for OpenOffice.org.

You can extend the functionality of OpenOffice.org Base by installing these
packages:

* unixodbc: ODBC database support
* libmyodbc | odbc-postgresql | libsqliteodbc | tdsodbc | mdbtools: ODBC
drivers for:
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- SQLite
- MS SQL / Sybase SQL
- *.mdb (JET / MS Access)
* libmysql-java | libpg-java: JDBC Drivers
for:
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL

thank you.

noob_crownclown said...

salahuddin..
im new with this microsoft access..
well i create a mdb files.
then my friend whant to open it without installing the microsoft access..
where can i download a apps , so they can open the mdb files without installing the microsoft access?
i've try the access viewer but they still cant open the forms inside the mdb files that i've created..
plss help me

Gunjo said...

Hi Salahuddin
Many thanks. Your instructions were easily understood and has helped me tremendously. I will also install the additional options. Again many thanks. Regards Gunjo (fellow Blogger)

Haripriya said...

hi.
in my office we having open office org,here i dont have MS-excel... my problem is I jus want to connect javascript with db.for that i wanna create .mdb file but in this open office.base no more privileges like that ... pls give me a solution... i want to access data from here to javascript....

salahuddin66 said...

Use php (or JSP) to read the data and print it XML.
Then use javascript to parse it.

I am not clear why you are tying to use javascript instead of bash or python script.

Could you please explain ?

>hi.
>in my office we having open office org,here i dont >have MS-excel... my problem is I jus want to connect >javascript with db.for that i wanna create .mdb file >but in this open office.base no more privileges like >that ... pls give me a solution... i want to access data >from here to javascript....

Jalink said...

Same problem here, no "Microsoft Access" in the list of "Connect to an existing database"
Using Kubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 with:
openoffice.org-base - 1:3.2.0-7ubuntu4.1 (amd64)