I don't have any hands-on experience with Salesforce myself, so I can't speak from personal use. However, yes, Access can connect to Salesforce via ODBC. Microsoft used to include a licensed Salesforce ODBC driver with Access, but they removed it in late 2025. The good news is that Access still supports ODBC, so you can use a third-party driver from companies like InsightSoftware (Simba), CData, Devart, and others.

Another option is to connect through Salesforce's REST API. That's actually very similar to how I've been teaching Access to connect to OpenAI and other web services using VBA, HTTP requests, and JSON, so the concepts are familiar even if the service is different.

If there's enough interest, I'd be happy to put together a lesson or even a small series on connecting Access to Salesforce. But it probably wouldn't be worth producing a full course for just one person. If you'd like to see that, let me know in the comments so I can gauge interest.

Just out of curiosity, what are you using Salesforce for that you can't do in Access? Is there some specific feature you're taking advantage of, or is it mainly because Salesforce is cloud-based and accessible from anywhere? I'd be interested to hear more about your use case.

Richard

I have connected to Database's using ODBC, but would like to learn all of your tips and tricks.

-Raymond

Tx.  Client has SF and wants to connect to Access database.  Bad reports in SF.  

I have used CDATA drivers before to connect to a Gmail account.  I'll see if Cdata has a driver to connect and eventually post the progress...  Thanks

Richard

After a couple clicks, found this:
https://www.cdata.com/blog/microsoft-access-salesforce-connector-deprecated-cdata-solution

Complete step by step to link Access to SF.  Cdata has the driver to do this apparently...

I would like to see how this is done if possible.  (both CDATA drivers and ODBC)

-Raymond

Yeah, that looks like a solution that would work. For $500 a year, though, that's pretty steep, but if it meets your business goals, it meets your business goals. If it were me, I'd explore the API route.

I asked ChatGPT what it thought about this, and I tend to agree with its assessment. The CDATA driver looks like a solid solution if you want Salesforce to appear as linked tables in Access. If you're an average business user and $500 per year saves you time and gets the job done, then it may be money well spent. Software is a tool, and I'm not opposed to paying for good tools.

That said... I'm a programmer. I'm also a nerd. If I can spend a day or two writing some VBA and save $500 every year, that's usually the route I'm going to take. That's just how my brain works.

Salesforce provides a full REST API that lets you read, add, update, and delete records over the web. Once you're authenticated, it's basically just sending HTTP requests and receiving JSON back, very similar to the OpenAI API and other web services I've worked with. Parse the JSON, display it in Access, or import it into local tables. The authentication (OAuth) is usually the hardest part. Once that's working, the rest is pretty straightforward.

The trade-off is really simplicity versus flexibility. The ODBC driver makes Salesforce feel like a regular Access database, so your existing queries, forms, and reports work with little or no modification. The API approach requires writing some VBA, but it costs nothing beyond your time and gives you complete control over how your application interacts with Salesforce.

I should point out that I have exactly zero hands-on experience with Salesforce itself. I've never even created a Salesforce account, so I can't pretend to be an expert on the platform. However, I've integrated Access with plenty of other online services using REST APIs, and the overall process is very similar regardless of what's on the other end.

If enough people are interested, I'd certainly consider putting together a video series on connecting Access to Salesforce through its API. I'd have to climb the learning curve first, but that's half the fun.

And just to be clear, I'm not trying to talk anyone out of buying the CDATA ODBC driver. From everything I've read, it looks like a perfectly valid, well-supported solution, and if your goal is to get up and running quickly with the least amount of effort, that's probably the route I'd recommend. My comments about using the API are coming from the perspective of someone who enjoys writing code and likes the challenge of building things. For most businesses, spending $500 a year to save hours of development time is probably a very reasonable investment.

Richard I have used CDATA as I noted with a gmail account.  The Access database had calendar events in it, but the table then had a live link to push the data to the regular Google calendar.  Worked perfectly and took about 10 minutes to setup.  Cdata allows you to download the demo, in case you can't get it to work.  For the $500, it is such a huge time saver and then you can link to the tables, just like SQL.