mdbtoolr provides a read-only DBI backend for Microsoft Access .mdb and .accdb files, powered by vendored native mdbtools sources compiled into the package.

install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("boostao/mdbtoolr")

library(DBI)
library(mdbtoolr)

db_path <- system.file("tests", "testthat", "mdbtestdata", "data", "nwind.mdb", package = "mdbtoolr")

con <- dbConnect(mdb(), dbname = db_path)

dbListTables(con)
dbListFields(con, "Products")

products <- dbReadTable(con, "Products")
head(products)

top_products <- dbGetQuery(
  con,
  "SELECT [ProductID], [ProductName] FROM [Products] LIMIT 5;"
)
top_products

mdbtoolr also includes mdbtools-style helpers such as:

• mdb_tables()
• mdb_queries()
• mdb_schema()
• mdb_sql()
• mdb_export()
• mdb_json()
• mdb_count()
• mdb_prop()

• Runtime is read-only. dbExecute() is intentionally unsupported.
• Core package features do not require the system mdbtools CLI binaries.
• Quote table names that contain spaces or symbols, for example [Order Details].