Convert MDB to PGSQL
Upload a .mdb or .accdb or .mde file and get back a PGSQL 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 PGSQL
Generated from the converter's own PGSQL type mapping — this is what it actually emits, not an example.
| Your data | PGSQL type |
|---|---|
| Whole number | BIGINT |
| Decimal (money) | NUMERIC(10,2) |
| Floating point | DOUBLE PRECISION |
| True / false | BOOLEAN |
| Date | DATE |
| Date and time | TIMESTAMP |
| Short text | TEXT |
| Long text | TEXT |
| Binary data | BYTEA |
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.
Loading into an application's database
PGSQL is the name PostgreSQL wears inside application code: PHP's pgsql extension, Laravel's pgsql connection driver, the pdo_pgsql DSN prefix. If that is where you met the name, the database you are loading into probably belongs to a framework, which changes what to watch for.
- →The script creates its own tables. Point it at a schema your migrations own and the next migration run and this file will disagree about who defines the table - load into an empty schema, or a database of its own, and point the application at that.
- →Because every identifier is double-quoted, the case the source used is the case that gets stored. A column that arrives as "CustomerID" has to be quoted in your queries too: an unquoted CustomerID folds to customerid and is not found.
- →No FOREIGN KEY, index or view statement is generated at all, so a framework that introspects the database finds unrelated tables. Declare the relations in your models, or add them with ALTER TABLE once the rows are in.
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 PGSQL
- →Backslashes are left alone, because PostgreSQL treats them as ordinary characters — doubling them would corrupt every Windows path.
- →Auto-increment columns become GENERATED BY DEFAULT AS IDENTITY.
- →Binary data is written as bytea, and identifiers respect the 63-character limit.
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 PostgreSQL: psql -U USER -d DATABASE -f dump.sql Create the database first if it does not exist: createdb -U USER DATABASE
Questions
- Is converting MDB to PGSQL 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 PGSQL?
- Yes — that is the point. Whole numbers, decimals, dates and booleans are mapped to real PGSQL 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.