About MDB Opener


What is an MDB (or accdb) file?

Microsoft Access and Visual Basic used to employ JET (Joint Engine Technology) as their underlying database engine. Over the years, JET has become synonymous with MS Access. In fact, many people refer to a JET database as an "Access database". These databases are stored as flat files with either an .mdb or .accdb extension in your filesystem. The JET file format has been deprecated and superseded first by Microsoft Desktop Engine (MSDE) and later by SQL Server Express. For some time, Windows continued to include tools to open these databases, but with Windows 8 or 10 it gets harder to find some options to open JET DBs.

Supported Access versions

You can open .mdb and .accdb files.
Supported formats are JET 3 - 5. In Access version numbers this corresponds to Access 97 - 2013. JET 1 and 2 databases (Microsoft Access 1.0 - 2.0) are currently not supported.

What is the difference between an .mdb and an .accdb file?

They are both used as database file formats for Microsoft products. Microsoft introduced the .accdb format in Access 2007, while all previous versions use the .mdb format.