First of all you need to see if you have Access installed on your computer.
Go to Start, Programs, and look for something like Microsoft Office. See if
Access is listed. If not you probably don't have Access and can't open the
file.
You also check by opening up another Office product, say Word, and then
going to Help, About Microsoft Office Word, and see if it says something
about "Professional" on the second or third line of the dialong box.
For all practical purposed, the only thing that will open an .MDB file is
Access. You might be able to link to the tables using Excel by doing a File,
Open, and selecting Access in the dropdown. However the raw data in the
tables might not look exactly right as compared to seeing it in forms and
reports within the database.
Any version of Access newer than 97 should be able to open the file.
OH! If the database file is on a CD, it will be read only. Even if you copy
it to your computer, it will most likely stay read only until you go to the
file properties and change it to read.
