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I have QGIS 3.2 installed (Windows 7 64-bit), and I need to be able to read and write to Esri file geodatabases.

I have read the thread Installing File Geodatabase (*.gdb) support in QGIS?, which explains how to install the necessary FileGDB driver during a fresh install of QGIS; however, I would like to install the FileGDB driver for my existing install of QGIS.

So, my question is:

Is there a way to install the FileGDB driver after QGIS has been installed?

p.s. If this were on my personal computer at home, I'd just do a fresh install. As it stands, it took me a few years of pestering my IT folks to even get them to allow an install of QGIS on my machine as a "test case", so the fewer hoops I have to ask them to jump through to get QGIS to meet all of our needs, like read/write to File GDB, the better!

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  • You should at lest be able to read them without installing any driver. What happens when you try: Layer-Add Layer-Add vector layer-Choose Directory, OpenFileGDB and the .gdb
    – BERA
    Oct 9, 2018 at 17:50
  • Yes, I'm able to read file geodatabases with no problem. As I stated, I need to also be able to write to file geodatabases. It's my understanding that to do so, I need to have the FileGDB driver installed rather than the default OpenFileGDB driver.
    – Kevin Garcia
    Oct 10, 2018 at 21:54
  • The very bottom post of this link, shows the two files you need and where to copy each file for FileGDBapi (esri r/w) support in Qgis. gis.stackexchange.com/questions/193288/…
    – klewis
    Jan 4, 2019 at 0:10

2 Answers 2

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To install gdal-filegdb on an existing QGIS (not installed with osgeo4w): close QGIS, run osgeo4w shell from QGIS 3.x program group as an administrator.

enter image description here

Run setup with -l option indicating the gdalplugins directory (under QGIS/bin) and -P option gdal-filegdb. You will be prompted for setup options (like qgis osgeo4w install). Select advanced and in the lib section be sure to have gdal-filegdb checked. Run QGIS, you will get the ESRI file gdb option on loading vector layers->directory. enter image description here

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  • Since I had my IT people already do a clean install (with gdal-filegdb selected, see my comment below), I can't test this out. It looks like the way to accomplish what I was trying to do (install the gdal-filegdb driver post-QGIS install), so I'm marking it as the best answer.
    – Kevin Garcia
    Oct 31, 2019 at 21:42
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I had my IT department do a clean install of QGIS, following the instructions in the aforementioned thread Installing File Geodatabase (*.gdb) support in QGIS?

At this point, I'm not sure if there's a way to install the FileGDB driver after installing QGIS, so this seems like the only workaround.

EDIT: Atilio's answer above achieves what I was originally trying to do (install the driver after QGIS was installed), so I've marked it as the answer. A clean install will still work, of course, but it's not optimal.

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