What Is an ADP File?

Most ADP files are used in MS Access, but others might be video or audio files

By
Tim Fisher
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Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University
Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.
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Updated on May 18, 2023

What to Know

  • An ADP file is a project file used by MS Access that connects to database tables.
  • Some ADP files might be video game audio files, or videos downloaded through a browser extension.

This article explains what an ADP file is and how to open one on your computer.

What Is an ADP File?

A file with the ADP file extension is a Microsoft Access file format that holds project information. It communicates directly with a Microsoft SQL Server database, but doesn't contain tables or queries like ACCDB files.

While much less common, other ADP files are either audio files used in video games, or videos downloaded from video streaming websites.

several ADP files in Windows 10

ADP is also a payroll service company, but it has nothing to do with the file formats discussed on this page. You might also see these letters used in abbreviations for unrelated technology terms like active data page and auto delivery program.

How to Open an ADP File

ADP files that are used with Microsoft Access can, of course, be opened with the program, too, but only if you're running a version older than Access 2013; they also don't work with SQL Server 2012 or newer.

We're not aware of a media player or other tool that can open ADP files that are ripped/copied from video game discs, nor do we have a download link for a compatible video player. However, we recommend trying the free VLC media player, which is known for supporting a wide range of media file formats.

Videos in this format are usually downloaded from browser add-ons like Video DownloadHelper for Firefox.

Something you can try if you have a video file is to rename it to have the .MP4 file extension (e.g., videofile.adp to videofile.mp4). This is only going to work if the file is truly an MP4, but it just uses the ADP file extension.

How to Convert an ADP File

Just as we don't have any information on opening ADP audio or video files, we also don't know of any tools to convert them to MP3s, MP4s, or any other audio/video format.

Still Can't Open the File?

One big reason any file doesn't open the way we expect it to, is because we've misread the file extension. This is actually really easy to do because lots of file extensions share some of the same letters/numbers.

For example, ADD looks an awful lot like ADP, but that file extension is used for Dynamic AX developer documentation files, something entirely unrelated to MS Access.

ADE and APD are also easy to confuse for this file extension.

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