Tuesday, September 16, 2008

How do you create a ODBC DSN for an Microsoft Access 2003 data source?

This example shows how you may create a ODBC DSN for the Northwind.mdb sample in the Sample directory of Microsoft Access on a Windows XP Machine.

1. Open ODBC Data Source Adminisitor from Start Control Panel Administrative Tools Data Sources(ODBC)
ODBC Data Source Administrator window gets displayed.


















2. Click on Add... button after you move over to the System DSN tab.
"Create New Data Source" window gets dsiplayed

3. Scroll and highlight Microsoft Access Driver (*mdb). If you are using Office 2007 you could use the other below it as shown.


















4. Click on the Finish button.

The ODBC Microsoft ACCESS SETUP WINDOW gets displayed as shown.
















5. Provide a name for the source, this is the DSN and provide an optional description.

Herein:
Data Source Name: MdbSource
Description: "Test source for MS Access 2003"

6. Click on the Select...button in the previous screen and locate the Northwind.mdb file as shown.















7. Click OK on the Select Database screen after selecting Northwind.mdb
The path information gets recorded as shown.

8. Click on the OK button on the ODBC Microsoft Access Setup window.

9. The new ODBC source you created "MdbSource" gets into the list of
System Data Sources as shown.


















You have successfully created a ODBC DSN.

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