Does ArcGIS Pro support MS Access 2007 (accdb)?

[DuncanHornby]

I've been tinkering around with ArcGIS Pro today and one thing I cannot seem to resolve is connecting to an Access 2007 (accdb) database.

In ArcMap 10.3 you would create an OLE connection in ArcCatalog then you have access to the tables in the database.

There seems to be no way of creating an OLE connection? Is this correct or has it been renamed to something else and I've just missed it? I've searched the online help and I come across many pages that explicitly state that OLE connections are accepted, here is just one example. Is this a scenario where the Help has just been copied 'n' pasted from ArcMap Help and ArcGIS Pro does not actually support OLE connections? ESRI are usually pretty good at providing help documentation, put this is pretty sloppy especially for it's new flagship desktop software? This page talks only about what is supported, I would have though it was just as important to explicitly state what is not supported!

So if OLE connections are not supported now, is there a plan to include them in a later release? Half the World uses MS Access, seems a bit of an odd business plan to just drop support for them?

[DanPatterson_Retired]

Duncan, just try a search using OLE in the ArcGIS pro help section... for example:

https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/help/projects/20039-import-ole-objects.htm

[DuncanHornby]

I came across that error code page in my wanderings of the help pages, then lots of pages that say they do accept OLE tables. It's all conflicting, hence me looking for a definitive response from ESRI?

[George_Thompson]

Hi Duncan,

Here is a link for the support data types in ArcGIS Pro: Supported data types and items—ArcGIS Pro | ArcGIS for Desktop

Hope this helps....

-George

[AsrujitSengupta · Accepted solution]

ArcGIS Pro will not support database connections to Access databases, so if you import a map document into ArcGIS Pro, the table from the OLE DB connection will show up with a broken link and you will not be able to repair the source. ArcGIS Pro is a 64-bit application, unlike ArcMap, and requires a 64-bit driver to make the OLE DB connection.Typically OLE DB has been used for legacy databases and unsupported RDBMS.

ArcGIS Idea - Data Store Access Directly From ArcGIS Pro

[DuncanHornby]

Just compliment your answer I found this article on the microsoft KB.

[JamesHunt]

Does anyone know whether there any plans to add the facility to connect ArcGis Pro to Microsoft Access? In the help section there is the advice "ArcGIS Pro only supports connections to Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and DB2 at this time." Otherwise I (and probably many others) will have to migrate a lot of data to one of the listed database management systems.

[RyanCoodey]

While it is a bummer there is no OLE DB or ODBC drivers for 64-bit Access connections (.accdb)... Microsoft does have a 64-bit version of the Access Database Engine (and of the Office application itself). I'm sure it is no simple task and a different approach than before, but I don't see why ESRI cannot use the 64-bit ACE drivers?

The loss of Access database connectivity is HUGE. I just heard that ArcGIS Pro 2.0 was considered to have feature parity with ArcMap... but without this greatly important feature we cannot claim that ourselves. Engineers love Access (and Excel) and not sure this is a limitation we can even work around.

Thanks for the consideration.

[BruceHarold]

Hello

Data Interoperability extension for ArcGIS Pro supports connecting to Access (mdb, accdb) using either JDBC connectivity (built in) or after installing 64bit ADO support from Microsoft.

[RyanCoodey]

Thanks for that info Bruce, that is great. Exporting data is always an option but unfortunately a manual/static one. Now just need it built in Pro for real-time joins or X/Y events . Unless there is something I am missing that Data Interoperability can do without manual involvement?