Access has always maintained an exceptional backwards compatibility between version, but as we move forward and new versions are released some of the older versions are being left behind.  Now I’m not going defend why this is happening, but I did want to try and create a simple list to easily know what version is compatible with which version.  This is what I’ve put together thus far.

Version	Compatible Up To
Access 2.0	Access 2003
Access 95	Access 2007
Access 97	Access 2010
Access 2000	Access 2016
Access XP (2002)	Access 2016
Access 2003	Access 2016+

So for example, if you had an Access 2.0 mdb and wanted to upgrade it to be able to run it on Access 2016 you’d need to use Access 2003 to upgrade the file format to Access 2002-2003 mdb format and then you could use Access 2016 to open the mdb and/or convert it.

Some Useful References:

Access 2.0 -> Import an Access 2.0 database into an Access 2007 file
Access 95 -> Import an Access 95 database into an Access 2007 file
Access 97 -> Convert a database to the .accdb file format
Access 2000, 2002 & 2003 -> Convert a database to the .accdb file format