Is anyone here able to convert a personal geodatabase file (.mdb)?

[froggie]

Some backstory:

I've been using ArcGIS for hobby-related projects (including virtually all the maps I post in this forum) for well over a decade.  When I first started, I collected much of my Minnesota-based project work into a personal geodatabase, which ArcMap was promoting at one point as more functional than individual shapefiles.

Fast forward to today and ArcGIS Pro, which does not support .mdb files.  Of course, my personal use license was upgraded to Pro before I realized this.  Supposedly, QGIS will still read them but it apparently requires a driver and settings that I lack the wherewithal to implement on my laptop.

Is there anyone in the AARoads forum-realm that has the ability to convert an .mdb into a File Geodatabase?  It would be much appreciated.

[Dirt Roads]

Once upon a time...

Back in the day, I was the FORTRAN whiz and was always converting various mapping data back-and-forth to various database formats:  Much of this involved the earliest variations of converting ARC/INFO commands into MDB files (and back).  Its been about 30 years since I last did this (and my old 386 machine with all that software has no chance of booting up).  Anyhoosit, why don't you try something for kicks:

ArcGIS is able to export its geodata files to Microsoft Excel format.  Excel is able to take MDB files as inputs to spreadsheets.  ArcGIS is also able to import and export data to XML format, and so can Excel.  QGIS has some features similar to ArcGIS, so you ought to be able to work through the puzzle (O.K., I'm not familiar with XML formats but you ought to be able to make use of the conversion process).

Step 1.  Pull up the same exact sample geodata elements in both your MDB file and also in QGIS (and eliminate all of the other stuff from those files).  Export the QGIS file to Excel.  Pull in the MDB file into a new Excel spreadsheet.  Compare the data and see if you can decipher how closely they line up.

Step 2.  If those are closely formatted, then export your entire MDB file into XML (or more simply, CSV).  Then see if you can import the XML (or CSV) file into QGIS. Be careful not to overwrite any "good datasets" and make sure that you can back out of QGIS if it reads the XML/CSV files but puts the geodata on the wrong part of the map.

With only a little bit of effort, you ought to be able to get to where you can manipulate XML and/or CSV datasets in Microsoft Excel and then import them into QGIS such that they fall into the correct coordinate system.  In the worst case, you ought to be able to find someone using the real ArcGIS to import the XML output from your MDB file and they should be able to save it for you in an ArcGIS File Geodatabase.

[Dirt Roads]

One kicker here is that sometimes I will get CSV files that look great, but have too much variance in the number of datafields (ergo, Excel columns).  The quickest way to handle that is to use a text editor and find/replace (or copy/paste) the correct number of "commas" to separate the data correctly.