How to Convert Odb to Mdb

The free Open Office suite can be an excellent alternative to the costly Microsoft Office product. Open Office includes a fully functional word processor, spreadsheet creator and database program. When you create a database in the Open Office oBase program, the file is saved in the ODB format, not the MDB format the Microsoft Access recognizes. While there is no direct way to convert an ODB file to MDB format, you can get the job done by converting and importing each database table.

Log on to your computer and run Open Office. Open your database file and the Calc program; which is also part of the Open Office suite.

Go to the tables section of the Open Office database program. Highlight the table and drag it to the blank Calc spreadsheet. You will see the data from your oBase table displayed in the Calc spreadsheet.

Click "File" on your Calc spreadsheet window. Choose "Save As" and click the "Files of type" drop-down box. Select "CSV" as the file type. This converts the data in your ODB table to comma separated value format. The CSV file format is a universal one that you can import into a number of different programs, including Microsoft Access.

Close Calc and the oBase database program. Open Microsoft Access and click "File."

Choose "Get External Data" and choose "Text files" as the file type. Navigate to the folder containing the CSV file you exported from the ODB file. Use the file import wizard to import the table into Access.

Repeat the same process with your remaining tables. If your ODB file contains more than one table you must export each one to CSV and then import it into Access. Open your newly created database and review the contents of your imported tables.