How to use MS Access ODBC driver without installing it?

Question

Up until today our company workstations would typically have the MS Office ODBC drivers installed in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE14

However, for some reason the configuration recently changed so that for example Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb) now points to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16

Unfortunately the actual installation of the driver is still in the OFFICE14 directory.

Is there any way to still use this driver to connect to Access?

I don't have admin access, so am looking for any possible work-around until tech-support acknowledge & resolve the issue.

Pash

I don't think you can - the installation (registry vs. file system) needs to be fixed. – Unpaid

Answer 1

Unfortunately, this is not possible. The driver will have to be installed and registered as an ODBC component. So far, I am aware of 3 ways to do so:

1. Use of ODBCCONF.EXE which resides in \windows\system32\ and \windows\syswow64.
2. Use of SQLInstallDriverEx() API provided by odbccp32.dll.
3. Manually create the registry keys (look at this SO answer)

Gracia

If you are interested, I have an open question for #2 here. – Gracia