Bug 91190 - Import from Access-Databases: only tables imported
Summary: Import from Access-Databases: only tables imported
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Base (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Windows (All)
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
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Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Database-MS_Access
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Reported: 2015-05-09 18:14 UTC by Henri
Modified: 2017-10-23 15:33 UTC (History)
0 users

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Description Henri 2015-05-09 18:14:42 UTC
Unfortunately, only tables are imported so far from Access 2002 databases. All queries, forms and code must be created again from scratch. That is, so far migration to *.odb format is not attractive at all.
Comment 1 Robert Großkopf 2015-05-10 07:51:37 UTC
This is the same behavior for all databases Base connects to: Only tables or views and the relations between tables could be connected to. Queries, forms and reports couldn't be imported from any other database.
Have a look at import of *.doc-files into Writer. For most parts it works. But not for all. *.doc to *.odt is often used. How many people would use *.mdb to *.odb? And there is much more code to import and much more developer-power needed as for *.doc to *.odt?

I could confirm only tables could be imported. But I don't see any possibility to change this behavior.
Comment 2 Henri 2015-05-24 10:13:50 UTC
Thanks for the answer. Sure, .accdb would be more important than .mdb to be imported. Please be aware that indeed people managing databases will hesitate to switch from MS Office to LibreOffice, as long as each imported database will need a lot of development work to be operative. Conversely, if the conversion would be relatively easy (as for Excel tablesheets, which can be made operative with only few changes in the code), probably many more people would decide to leave Microsoft's world…
Comment 3 Alex Thurgood 2017-10-20 14:05:37 UTC
No one is going to fix this for 32bit MDB databases that not even Microsoft supports on its 64bit platform.

I suggest closing this, and other similar reports as either WONTFIX, or NOTOURBUG, or else WFM in 64bit everything and Access >= 2010.
Comment 4 Alex Thurgood 2017-10-20 14:32:13 UTC
@Henri: what you describe is also applicable to any Access db that LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org before it, and even StarOffice have ever been able to acess. This is inherited behaviour.

With the move to 64bit OS, drivers and office software, MS no longer provides acess to 32bit Access mdb files, so consequently these too are already no longer accessible in 64bit versions of LibreOffice.

Within LibreOffice there exists an extension called Acces2Base - it is a set of macros designed to help MS Access and VB programmers migrate not only their tables, views, etc, but also their queries, forms, reports, etc. Perhaps, you might find a solution to your problem there.
Comment 5 Henri 2017-10-23 11:23:41 UTC
(1)
I use MS Access 2010 ×64 and have no problem to use any .accdb or .mdb database. Both formats are fully supported !

(2)
I tried again to import Access databases. MS Office 2010 ×64 is installed with all necessary drivers as well as the latest version of LibreOffice ×64 (German):
5.4.2.2 (x64) Build-ID: 22b09f6418e8c2d508a9eaf86b2399209b0990f4

The tentative to import any Access .accdb database from LibreOffice Base with following method (translation from German, English wording may be different):
- Connection to existing database - Microsoft Access 2007 - Further - Search - MS Access 2007 database - MyDatabaseXYZ.accdb - Open - Further - Done - Save As - MyDatabaseXYZ.odb leads to following error message:
"Connection to Database MyDatabaseXYZ could not be established / Connection could not be established / Maybe the necessary data provider is not installed"
(without any hint which data provider is missing - note that all components of MS Office and LibreOffice are installed)

Thus, there is still no possibility of importing the Access data !
In the far past, I could at least see the names of the Access tables before the crash happened, now not even this…

(3)
Sure I could first export the Access databases into Excel than import the data from Excel to Base, but I would have first to recreated all tables (a huge lot of work with many possibilities of errors)
Comment 6 Alex Thurgood 2017-10-23 15:29:18 UTC
(In reply to Henri from comment #5)
> (1)
> I use MS Access 2010 ×64 and have no problem to use any .accdb or .mdb
> database. Both formats are fully supported !
>

Yes, Access 2010 allowed users to read both mdb and accdb (2007) formats, with the recommendation by Microsoft to convert at least the mdb formats to 2010 accdb:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Convert-a-database-to-the-accdb-file-format-098DDD31-5F84-4E89-8F44-DB0CF7C11ACD

See also the note at this link:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Convert-a-database-to-the-accdb-file-format-098DDD31-5F84-4E89-8F44-DB0CF7C11ACD#__use_access_2007


Access 2010 by default was 32 bit :

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ee691831(v=office.14).aspx

The user/admin needed to specifically activate the 64bit installation.


As regards the DatabaseAccessEngine components and the problems of 32/64 bit:

https://techblog.aimms.com/2014/10/27/installing-32-bit-and-64-bit-microsoft-access-drivers-next-to-each-other/
Comment 7 Alex Thurgood 2017-10-23 15:33:19 UTC
(In reply to Henri from comment #5)

See my limited success report with 64bit Access 2016 accdb files in bug 43187