ms-accessmdbtools

Access Access Design View field descriptions


I have an Access database with field descriptions that (theoretically) are visible in Design View. I don't have a copy of access. I can export the data and schema using mdbtools, but those don't come with the descriptions. Are there ways to programmatically extract those descriptions?


Solution

  • Turns out there was an un/under-documented mdbutils command that will give metadata for a table: mdb-prop. Here's a shell script that will list out the metadata of every field, adapted from a script whose provenance I have forgotten:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    # Usage: mdb-export-all.sh full-path-to-db
    
    command -v mdb-tables >/dev/null 2>&1 || {
        echo >&2 "I require mdb-tables but it's not installed. Aborting.";
        exit 1;
    }
    
    command -v mdb-export >/dev/null 2>&1 || {
        echo >&2 "I require mdb-export but it's not installed. Aborting.";
        exit 1;
    }
    
    fullfilename=$1
    filename=$(basename "$fullfilename")
    dbname=${filename%.*}
    
    mkdir "$dbname"
    
    IFS=$'\n'
    for table in $(mdb-tables -1 "$fullfilename"); do
        echo "Check table $table"
    
        # Save a file with with all metadata for every field
        mdb-prop "$fullfilename" "$table" > "$dbname/$table.txt"
    
        # Save a file with with just the descriptions:
        cat "$dbname/$table.txt" | grep -E 'name|Description' > "$dbname/info_$table.txt"
    done