Is there any way to view .accdb data in Pro?

[KamillePreto]

I never use Microsoft Access for the work that I do, but I do know that GIS professionals would be able to open or convert the Access data into their GIS. I was sent a .accdb from somebody who needs a map created and web application and I am unfamiliar with what the steps look like from here. I am aware that .accdb are no longer able to open up in Pro (I read in a few forums), however, I feel like there has to be some way to get the data from an .accdb into Pro so I can save the layers as shapefiles or feature classes.

I tried to go to Properties of the .accdb and change the extension to .gdb, which worked. But it is not showing up as a file that is able to be pulled into Pro - I assume it's formatting related.

Can anybody help me?

This type of GIS-related work is above my skill set and I am definitely confused.

[JoshuaBixby]

The short answer, not really.  I assume you read Microsoft Access (.accdb) Support in ArcGIS Pro?  The idea/request has been around for years, and Esri is now saying it is "In Product Plan" but they don't say when it will show up.  There is also https://community.esri.com/community/open-platform-standards-and-interoperability/blog/2019/09/26/us... 

[KamillePreto]

Thanks Joshua. Yes I voted on that Idea earlier today as well during my research. I'm going to check out the second link you sent me. 

So there is no way to convert the existing .accdb into something that Pro can read?

[JoshuaBixby]

If you are willing to spend some money, there are several tools that various companies put out that convert entire Access databases to other formats, like SQLite, that ArcGIS Pro can read.  I am not aware of any free or open-source tools that do entire DB migration.

If there aren't too many tables, then you could export tables as CSV or to Excel worksheets and then open them in Pro that way.  If there are a lot of tables, you could script something similar.

One other idea, although convoluted, would be to convert an ACCDB to MDB and then use ArcGIS Desktop/ArcMap to convert/copy from MDB to FGDB.

[WilliamRice]

For File Geodatabase to Personal Geodatabase to Microsoft Access workflows and reverse, one option is to keep around an older version of ArcGIS Desktop around such as ArcGIS Desktop 10.3.1 around on an older machine or virtual machine.  

[JoeBorgione]

(posted just after Joshua's repsonse without seeing his...)You can always export your Access Table(s) to csv format and then use a table to table  in Pro to bring the csv into a fgdb table.  Be careful when you do that as you may need to manually adjust the field types during that process to maintain the original type.

[KoryKramer · Accepted solution]

OLE DB support is coming in the next release of Pro (2.6) which is scheduled for July.  In a development build, I have created a connection to an .accdb file:

[JoeBorgione]

That's going to make tons of people very, very happy!

Kory Kramer‌

[KoryKramer]

Yes, we know

[JoshuaBixby]

I agree, Joe.  Given that ArcGIS Pro 1.0 was released 01/2015, it is still frustrating that it took Esri 5+ years to add functionality that ArcMap had before Pro was released.