Open Geodatabase in QGIS

More often than not, many geospatial dataset are still stored in geodatabase, containing list of shapefiles. Since it is not really friendly to be transferred to other platform, I hereby would like to share how to open your shapefile stored in geodatabase (.gdb), into your QGIS environment.

1. Open your QGIS

I am using my QGIS 3.22.3-Białowieża version. Click “Layer → Add Layer → Add vector layer” or simply type in Ctrl + Shift + V to open the add layer window.

Open the Add Vector Layer window

2. Locate your geodatabase files

Once the Data Source Manager | Vector is opened, tick in the Directory in the Source Type. Activate the drop down menu on Type, change it to OpenFileGDB. Then click in the three dots button to browse your geodatabase file location with .gdb extension and Select Folder. Once finished, click Add. Another window will come up to check which layer to add, you can add all of the shapefile, but you can also filter the file that you would like to open, then click Add Layer.

Check in the highlighted button

These are some of the changes that will occur.

1. All of the shapefiles will be loaded seamlessly