Convert MS Access to Microsoft SQL Server
Upload a .mdb or .accdb or .mde file and get back a Microsoft SQL Server SQL script you can load straight into your database. Types are preserved rather than flattened to text. Free, no registration, up to 10MB.
Click to upload or drag and drop
CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)
How your data is typed in Microsoft SQL Server
Generated from the converter's own Microsoft SQL Server type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | Microsoft SQL Server type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | DECIMAL(10,2) |
| Floating point | FLOAT |
| True / false | BIT |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | DATETIME2 |
| Short text | NVARCHAR(255) |
| Long text | NVARCHAR(MAX) |
| Binary data | VARBINARY(MAX) |
Working from an Access database
An Access file is an application as much as a database: tables, but also queries, forms, reports, macros and VBA modules. Only one of those is data, and only that one is something a conversion can carry anywhere else.
- →The tables convert. Saved queries, forms, reports, macros and modules are not data and do not appear in the output - re-create a query as a view in the target if you need it.
- →Access types map to fixed shapes: Currency to DECIMAL(19,4), matching Access's own four fixed decimal places, Decimal to DECIMAL(18,6), Long Integer to a 32-bit integer, Byte and Integer to 16-bit, Memo and Hyperlink to text, OLE and Binary to a blob.
- →If the file cannot be opened at all - a database password, or real damage - the conversion stops with the underlying tool's own error instead of handing you a partial result.
Which SQL Server this runs on
Microsoft SQL Server is the full product name, and it covers a wide range of places to put a database: Express on a laptop, a Developer instance, a Linux container, a managed Azure SQL database. The script was written not to care which of them it lands in.
- →There is no CREATE DATABASE, no USE, and no filegroup or collation clause anywhere in the file, so nothing in it can be refused by an edition that forbids those. Which database it populates is decided by your client's connection.
- →No schema is named either, so the tables land in the default schema of whichever login runs the script - dbo for most logins. Moving them elsewhere afterwards is an ALTER SCHEMA ... TRANSFER.
- →The primary key is emitted as an unnamed constraint, which the server materialises as a clustered index under a name it invents. Nothing else is indexed, so any index the source carried has to be rebuilt by hand.
Reading MS Access
- →Dates are exported in ISO form, avoiding the ambiguous 12/02/21 that Access tools produce by default.
- →NULL and the empty string stay distinct.
- →Access can hold dates outside the range it can represent. Those become NULL and the conversion tells you, rather than dropping them silently.
- →Requires mdbtools on the server; if it is unavailable you get a clear error rather than a partial conversion.
Writing Microsoft SQL Server
- →String literals carry the N prefix, so non-ASCII text survives whatever collation the database uses.
- →Timestamps become DATETIME2. T-SQL’s TIMESTAMP is a row-version counter, not a point in time.
- →Identity columns are wrapped in SET IDENTITY_INSERT so explicit key values load.
- →Statements are separated with GO in batches.
What you get
A ZIP containing dump.sql, plus a README with the exact command to load it. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.
Load this dump into SQL Server:
sqlcmd -S HOST -U USER -P PASSWORD -d DATABASE -i dump.sql
Notes:
- Text columns are NVARCHAR and literals carry the N prefix, so
non-ASCII data survives regardless of database collation.
- Timestamps are DATETIME2. T-SQL's TIMESTAMP type is a row
version, not a point in time.Questions
- Is converting MS Access to Microsoft SQL Server free?
- Yes. Files up to 10MB convert free with no account. There is a limit of five conversions per day per IP address.
- Will my MS Access data keep its types in Microsoft SQL Server?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Microsoft SQL Server types rather than everything becoming text. The mapping table above shows exactly what you get.
- Do you store my file?
- No. The file is written to a temporary directory, converted, and the directory is deleted as soon as your download has been sent.