Is converting MDB 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 MDB 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.

Convert MDB 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.

1Upload your file

Click to upload or drag and drop

CSV, Excel, SQLite, SQL, DBF (max 10 MB)

2Choose target format

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 .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.

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 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 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 MDB 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 MDB 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.