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How to open an .accdb or .mdb file on a Chromebook

A Chromebook cannot run Microsoft Access, and there is no Android app for the format. The good news is that a Chromebook is the one machine where a Chrome extension is the native answer rather than a workaround.

What works

  1. AccessLens (Chrome extension). Reads .mdb and .accdb files (Access 97 through 2019) entirely inside the browser. Open the file from the Files app or from Google Drive through the normal file picker, browse and search every table, and export a table to CSV or every table to one Excel workbook, then open it in Google Sheets. The extension has no permissions of any kind: no Drive access, no network access. It only ever sees the one file you pick.
  2. Linux (Crostini) + mdbtools. For the command-line inclined: enable Linux on the Chromebook, sudo apt install mdbtools, then mdb-export file.mdb TableName > table.csv. Works well; Jet 3 (Access 97) support varies by version.
  3. Online converters. Upload the file, download a spreadsheet. Convenient until the file is something you are not allowed to hand to a third party.

On a school or work Chromebook

Managed devices can block extension installs. If the Chrome Web Store shows the extension as blocked by your administrator, ask them to allow it by ID — ceilhkpcnofeomaibeldikllpgjolaml. The permissions list on the listing is empty, which is normally what an administrator needs to see.

Just need the tables out of the file?

AccessLens opens .mdb and .accdb files (Access 97 to 2019, password-protected included) in a Chrome tab on your own machine. Browse and search any table, and export to CSV, Excel or SQLite. It contains no network code and requests no permissions, so the file stays on your computer.

Free: browsing, searching a table and exporting it to CSV, at any size. Exporting or searching every table at once is free up to 20 tables and 50,000 rows in total; above that it needs an optional one-time Pro licence.

Add to Chrome — free No account. No upload. Read-only: it never changes your file. Using Firefox? Get it from Firefox Add-ons.

Questions

Can a Chromebook open Microsoft Access files?

Not with Access itself, which does not run on ChromeOS. A Chrome extension that parses the format, such as AccessLens, opens .mdb and .accdb files directly in the browser; mdbtools under Linux is the command-line alternative.

Does AccessLens need access to my Google Drive?

No. It requests no permissions at all. You pick a file through the standard file picker and only that file is read, on the device.