Welcome to the MDB Doc pages at Sourceforge.net

Welcome to the MDB Doc pages at Sourceforge.net. MDB Doc is an add-in for Microsoft Access 97-2013 that allows you to document the following objects/properties within an Access database to an HTML (the language used for writing web pages) file:

It provides an easy way to generate basic system documentation for the objects contained in it. If you use it for many projects, features such as the ability to include a comment for a sub, function or property routine will allow you to build basic application documentation for your Access based applications very quickly.
There are several preferences that are available within the software to customise the operation of MDB Doc to you or your company's needs.

Full details of the facilities in the software are included in the accompanying Readme file, which I encourage you to read, or it can be viewed from the links in the Feature comparison table below.

Migration from http to https and change of URL, March 2021

In line with modern security best practices, I have decided to use the https option available from Sourceforge.net web hosting. Due to local file security implemented by modern browsers, CSS will fail to load due to local resource access. My recommendation is to upgrade to the latest version, but if you are unable to do this, a quick fix is to go into the preferences screen and change the setting of StyleSheetPath from
http://mdbdoc.sourceforge.net/mdbdoc151.css
to https://mdbdoc.sourceforge.io/mdbdoc151.css
Then run the processor to rebuild your report. The CSS styles should reappear. If you don't wish to do this, simply open the file in a text editor of your choice and use search/replace to amend URLs as per above.

Versions of MDB Doc

There are three different versions of MDB Doc available for download at the present time. Please consult the feature comparison table below to determine the best for your needs.

MDB Doc Feature Comparison table
Feature Version 1.65 Version 1.55 Version 1.51b
Compatible Access versions Access 2007, 2010, 2013-2019 (1) Access 2000, XP (2002) & 2003 Access 97
Named anchors within the file YesYes YesYes YesYes
Language used HTML5 HTML5 HTML5
Prompt to overwrite existing files Yes (if preference set) Yes (if preference set) Yes (if preference set)
Will report comment in Subs, Functions and Property routines YesYes YesYes YesYes
Set Preferences for style sheets, output paths, meta tags etc YesYes YesYes YesYes
Output files meet W3C Accessibility guidelines YesYes YesYes YesYes
Ability to set which object types are included in the output file? YesYes YesYes YesYes
Full VBA Source code included YesYes YesYes YesYes
View details of VBA references YesYes YesYes YesYes
Support for Data Access Pages YesYes YesYes No
Ribbon details from the USysRibbons table YesYes No No
Import/Export specifications YesYes No No
View output from running it against the Northwind database (2) MDB Doc 1.65 output MDB Doc 1.55 output MDB Doc 1.51b output
Download size 784Kb 751Kb 713Kb
Download Download MDB Doc 1.65Download MDBDoc 1.65 Download MDB Doc 1.55Download MDBDoc 1.55 Download MDB Doc 1.51bDownload MDBDoc 1.51b
View Readme file YesView MDBDoc 1.65 Readme YesView MDBDoc 1.55 Readme YesView MDBDoc 1.51b Readme

(1) MDB Doc version 1.55 will run perfectly on 32 bit versions of Access 2007-2019. However, it will not process the full range of data available to it.
(2) As the Northwind database out of the box doesn't have the MDB Doc comment features implemented, please click here to look at MDB Doc 1.65's report on its own source code, in which I have used this facility.

Please note that MDB Doc is supplied as a Zip file, you will need suitable software to extract it. Most modern operating systems come with such capabilities built in, but if you don't have anything installed that will read zip files, I can recommend 7-Zip.

MDB Doc Enhancements

The enhancements list has been moved from here to the product enhancements section of Sourceforge. The aim is to centralise this list from the three different ones that were previously available. View the MDB Doc enhancements list.

MDB Doc System Requirements

More details on the exact system requirements and limitations are in the YesReadme file included in the download zip file.

MDB Doc 2.0

I have started working on MDB Doc 2.0. Due to personal commitments I have little time to work on this at present. Its main enhancement is adding XML export functionality alongside the existing HTML. At present my test XML exports don't export the full range of data that are currently handled by HTML. The application works by using the MSXML6 parser called from VBA to create the XML file and then saves the resulting item to disk.

However, for interested parties, the latest versions of my outputs for northwind and mdbdoc databases. The main outstanding feature still to develop is the module parser. If anybody else is interested in helping with this please contact me through the email address in the readme file.

A lot of work has gone into this so far, and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge sources used in its development and familiarising myself with XML in general and the MSXML library: