The following table lists ANSI SQL data types, their equivalent Microsoft Access database engine SQL data types, and their valid synonyms. It also lists the equivalent Microsoft SQL Server data types.

ANSI SQL data type

Microsoft Access SQL data type

Synonym

Microsoft SQL Server data type

BIT, BIT VARYING

BINARY (See Notes)

VARBINARY, BINARY VARYING BIT VARYING

BINARY, VARBINARY

Not supported

BIT (See Notes)

BOOLEAN, LOGICAL, LOGICAL1, YESNO

BIT

Not supported

TINYINT

INTEGER1, BYTE

TINYINT

Not supported

COUNTER (See Notes)

AUTOINCREMENT

(See Notes)

Not supported

MONEY

CURRENCY

MONEY

DATE, TIME, TIMESTAMP

DATETIME

DATE, TIME (See Notes)

DATETIME

Not supported

UNIQUEIDENTIFIER

GUID

UNIQUEIDENTIFIER

DECIMAL

DECIMAL

NUMERIC, DEC

DECIMAL

REAL

REAL

SINGLE, FLOAT4, IEEESINGLE

REAL

DOUBLE PRECISION, FLOAT

FLOAT

DOUBLE, FLOAT8, IEEEDOUBLE, NUMBER (See Notes)

FLOAT

SMALLINT

SMALLINT

SHORT, INTEGER2

SMALLINT

INTEGER

INTEGER

LONG, INT, INTEGER4

INTEGER

INTERVAL

Not supported

Not supported

Not supported

IMAGE

LONGBINARY, GENERAL, OLEOBJECT

IMAGE

Not supported

TEXT (See Notes)

LONGTEXT, LONGCHAR, MEMO, NOTE, NTEXT (See Notes)

TEXT

CHARACTER, CHARACTER VARYING, NATIONAL CHARACTER, NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING

CHAR (See Notes)

TEXT(n), ALPHANUMERIC, CHARACTER, STRING, VARCHAR, CHARACTER VARYING, NCHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER, NATIONAL CHAR, NATIONAL CHARACTER VARYING, NATIONAL CHAR VARYING (See Notes)

CHAR, VARCHAR, NCHAR, NVARCHAR

Notes: 

  • The ANSI SQL BIT data type does not correspond to the Microsoft Access SQL BIT data type. It corresponds to the BINARY data type instead. There is no ANSI SQL equivalent for the Microsoft Access SQL BIT data type.

  • TIMESTAMP is no longer supported as a synonym for DATETIME.

  • NUMERIC is no longer supported as a synonym for FLOAT or DOUBLE. NUMERIC is now used as a synonym for DECIMAL.

  • A LONGTEXT field is always stored in the Unicode representation format.

  • If the data type name TEXT is used without specifying the optional length, a LONGTEXT field is created. This enables CREATE TABLE statements to be written that will yield data types consistent with Microsoft SQL Server.

  • A CHAR field is always stored in the Unicode representation format, which is the equivalent of the ANSI SQL NATIONAL CHAR data type.

  • If the data type name TEXT is used and the optional length is specified, for example TEXT(25), the data type of the field is equivalent to the CHAR data type. This preserves backwards compatibility for most Microsoft Access applications, while enabling the TEXT data type (without a length specification) to be aligned with Microsoft SQL Server.

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