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I am 100% Mac now, but have an important Microsoft Access database on an old PC. Every few months I have to break it out to get into the database. What are my cheapest options for liberating myself from my PC and getting full access to the database on my Mac? I'd love to make it web-accessible to myself and chosen others, but that's not necessary.

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So it's not actually 100% yet ;-) – Daniel Beck Aug 24 '11 at 17:16
possible duplicate of What's the equivalent of Microsoft Access on the Mac? – techie007 Aug 24 '11 at 20:34
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OpenOffice and LibreOffice are free, open source Microsoft Office clones. They are available on all platforms and OS's. Both have the ability to open and save Microsoft Office documents, as well as many other formats.

LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice, and I personally like it better than OpenOffice.

Both Open and LibreOffice can open the Microsoft Access file directly without any conversion necessary. Just copy the file somewhere accessible to your Mac and you are good to go.

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Could you also provide information specific to the user's question, i.e. how to actually go and replace Access with Open/LibreOffice. How much can he keep, all of it? – Daniel Beck Aug 24 '11 at 17:16
LibreOffice worked for me. Thanks! – ed94133 Aug 27 '11 at 4:00
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Use Darwine. I use it for an Access 2003 database once a month, and don't gotta boot into windows at all :) Plus it looks integrated, and runs Access natively

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There is also Bento and filemaker which are Mac database programs. They should be able to import Access databases, but they're not free.

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The easiest solution is to install Parallels (or some other Windows emulator) so you can run the Access app on your Mac. I have clients doing this, but I'm not thrilled with it. But for occasional access, it's perfectly satisfactory.

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How is this the easiest and cheapest?! Purchasing and installing virtual machine software (VirualBox is the only free one I know of), not to mention the possibility of purchasing another Windows license. Then having to maintain the virtualized OS, whose sole purpose is to run Access. Makes much more sense to use free software that is Access compatible. – Keltari Aug 27 '11 at 4:09
It's much easier to maintain a Windows emulator like Parallels than it is to port to Filemaker (the only alternative that matches the scope of Access and runs natively on the Mac). And I didn't say anything about "cheapest" as I don't know the relative prices of the relevant software. I suspect that Filemaker Pro is more expensive than Parallels, but I don't know that for a fact -- which is why I DIDN'T MENTION IT. – David W. Fenton Aug 30 '11 at 21:18
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