Convert MDB to Excel

Upload a .mdb or .accdb or .mde file and get back a Excel file. 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 Excel

Generated from the converter's own Excel type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.

Your dataExcel type
Whole numbernumber
Decimal (money)number
Floating pointnumber
True / falseboolean
Datedate
Date and timedate
Short texttext
Long texttext
Binary datahex text

Working from an .mdb file

An .mdb file is Jet 4, the engine Access used up to 2003. It is the format most likely to be sitting on a share drive with no copy of Access left in the building to open it - which is the situation this converter exists for.

  • Jet 4 caps a database at 2 GB and a table at 255 columns, which is why an .mdb that has outgrown its purpose is usually a migration rather than a rewrite.
  • There is no companion file to hunt for. A .ldb sitting beside the database is only a lock file from whoever last had it open, and nothing in it is needed - upload the .mdb on its own.
  • Every table is read into memory in one pass before anything is written out, which is affordable only because the free upload is capped at 10 MB; a full-size Jet database would not be.

What opens the converted workbook

Choosing Excel as the target puts no copy of Excel anywhere in the process: the workbook is assembled on the server by a library and handed over finished. What that library writes is what decides how the result behaves when you open it.

  • The output is .xlsx, the OOXML format, and only that. There is no .xls option, so a machine that can open nothing newer than Excel 97-2003 needs the CSV target and a save from there instead.
  • Values are the only thing written. No formulas, no macros, no charts, no column widths, no frozen header row - which is why the first thing most people do with it is widen a column. If Excel opens it in Protected View, that is the mark of the web on a downloaded file rather than anything in the workbook.
  • A conversion is capped at a million rows across all of its tables, and a worksheet holds 1,048,576, so no table can ever arrive too tall for the sheet it is being written into.

Reading MDB

  • 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 Excel

  • One file per table. Booleans stay booleans and numbers stay numbers.
  • Excel has no fixed-point type, so decimals become numbers — use a database target if exactness matters.

What you get

A ZIP containing <table>.xlsx. If anything about your data needed a judgement call, a _warnings.txt explains it.

Questions

Is converting MDB to Excel 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 MDB data keep its types in Excel?
Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real Excel 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.

This conversion, under other names

Convert MDB to something else

Convert something else to Excel