Microsoft Access 2019

Connecting with Access 2019

Creating an MS Access file and setting up the connection

1. Open Access
2. Create a new “Blank desktop database”
3. Close the empty table that has been created by default.
4. Click “External Data” in the top menu
5. Under "New Data Source," expand "From Other Sources," then click “ODBC Database”
6. Choose “Link to the data source by creating a linked table” and click “OK”
7. In the “Select Data Source” window that opens, click the second tab found at the top of the window (“Machine Data Source”).
8. Click "New..." to set up a new connection to the LDP public instance*
9. Select "User Data Source"
10. In the list of drivers that pops up, scroll down until you see the PostgreSQL drivers. Choose “PostgreSQL Unicode”. Click "Next >".
11. Click "Finish."
12. In the window that opens, enter the connection details from above, using the "host" information for the "Server" field. For Description, give the connection a name.
13. Click "Test." If the connection is successful, click “Save.”
14. In the next window that opens, click the “Select All” button on the right, click the “Save password” box so that it is checked, and click the “OK” button. (Note: if you choose to save the password, you may have to confirm this choice for every linked table.)

Note: these instructions work for MS Access 2019. If they do not work for previous versions of MS Access, the MS Access 2016 instructions (see above) might work. In that version, you need to use the Windows ODBC administrator to set up the data connection outside of MS Access. I had trouble when I used the 64-bit version of the ODBC administrator to set up the data connection, so if you get an error with 64-bit, you might want to try the 32-bit version of the ODBC administrator.