After upgrading a customer from Windows XP to Windows 7 I recently discovered that Microsoft decided to quietly deprecate native support for xBase/DBF formats (Dbase III, IV and V) formats in Office/Access 2013 which resulted in an unhelpful Error: “Could Not Find Installable ISAM” error message. This was a problem as the customer used a legacy ERP package and still required the support.
Fortunately it is possible restore support for DBF formats in Office/Access 2013 by installing the free Access 2010 runtime and performing a small registry hack.
First install the Access 2010 runtime which can be downloaded from Microsoft’s website here:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=10910
Installing the runtime before or after Office/Access 2013 worked for me, but your mileage may vary…
Second merge the following registry entries. This was tested on a Windows 7 x64 with the 32-bit version Office so the key locations may vary for 32-bit Windows/64-bit Office installation:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Access Connectivity Engine\Engines\Xbase]
"win32"="C:\\PROGRA~2\\COMMON~1\\MICROS~1\\OFFICE14\\ACEXBE.DLL"
"DbcsStr"=hex:01
"Mark"=dword:00000000
"Date"="MDY"
"Exact"=hex:00
"Deleted"=hex:01
"Century"=hex:00
"CollatingSequence"="Ascii"
"DataCodePage"="OEM"
"NetworkAccess"=hex:01
"PageTimeout"=dword:00000258
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Access Connectivity Engine\ISAM Formats]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Access Connectivity Engine\ISAM Formats\dBASE 5.0]
"Engine"="Xbase"
"ExportFilter"="dBASE 5 (*.dbf)"
"ImportFilter"="dBASE 5 (*.dbf)"
"CanLink"=hex:01
"OneTablePerFile"=hex:01
"IsamType"=dword:00000000
"IndexDialog"=hex:00
"CreateDBOnExport"=hex:00
"SupportsLongNames"=hex:00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Access Connectivity Engine\ISAM Formats\dBASE III]
"Engine"="Xbase"
"ExportFilter"="dBASE III (*.dbf)"
"ImportFilter"="dBASE III (*.dbf)"
"CanLink"=hex:01
"OneTablePerFile"=hex:01
"IsamType"=dword:00000000
"IndexDialog"=hex:00
"CreateDBOnExport"=hex:00
"SupportsLongNames"=hex:00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Access Connectivity Engine\ISAM Formats\dBASE IV]
"Engine"="Xbase"
"ExportFilter"="dBASE IV (*.dbf)"
"ImportFilter"="dBASE IV (*.dbf)"
"CanLink"=hex:01
"OneTablePerFile"=hex:01
"IsamType"=dword:00000000
"IndexDialog"=hex:00
"CreateDBOnExport"=hex:00
"SupportsLongNames"=hex:00
You should now be able to open your DBF database file successfully in Access 2013.