Convert Access to mySQL?

[lordsmurf]

I need to convert my Access forum database into mySQL, before I can migrate.

What I have read or what I know is this:

Access is supposedly in Latin-1 aka ISO 8859-1
mySQL needs to be in UTF8

I'm using a Windows 2003 server, no shell access, no Linux
Can use phpMyAdmin, but typically prefer software on home computer. The phpMyAdmin tends to be molasses slow

Computer used at home is Windows XP SP1

Not a database techie. Many years of computer experience, but databases is outside the scope of what I know right now. Everything I read skips steps or assumes I know all about databases, or that I use Linux, etc.

I've read myself blue (pun intended) for hours and hours and hours, spread out across months. No closer now than I was when I started.

Help.

[Soopafresh]

Buy an app that'll do it for you. The names escape me at the moment. There are several out there.


Free one (I think)

http://www.listsoft.com/?id=8083

[JohnnyMalaria]

I have no idea if this works or not:

http://www.bullzip.com/products/a2m/info.php - a product called "Access to MySQL". Seems to be donate-ware.

[Soopafresh]

Smurf - Try Xampp as an intergrated Apache/Mysql/etc app. No installation required. Unzip and go. Johnny's link looks like a winner for a conversion App, btw.

[lordsmurf]

I can't get the "bullzip" tool to install on two computers. I've done everything it asked (update MS XML 4 to SP2, etc), and I get an abort/ignore error on the last phase of install. I'll take it to work with me on Monday, maybe it'll do better there. Tabling it for now.

I would be open to buying a piece of software if it came with a demo. The ones I've seen so far had no demo or a demo that was so limited that I couldn't do a decent test.

I'll look at Xampp, whatever that is.

Video tech is cake compared to this database stuff.

[Soopafresh]

Not really. You're an expert at one and a newbie at the other. Computing is too big a field to be great at them all.

[LarryEvilsizer]

MySQL has a migration toolkit at http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/migration-toolkit/ that might help you out. There are also access migration and migration toolkit forums at http://forums.mysql.com/index.php which also might assist you.

I had to do this with an access database I had at work and the migration toolkit worked well enough.

Good luck,
Larry

[redwudz]

What I've done a few times is convert Access database files to an Excel spreadsheet, then from there to the data base I use most often, Filemaker Pro. Excel was the only program I could find that could read Access files. And Excel can export in a lot more formats. The only problem I had is Excel has a 255 character limitation on fields, so anything beyond that is lost when converting.

Access, I swear, was designed to be as difficult as possible to convert to any other usable format. Thanks, MS. I hated every minute I had to work with it.