How do I connect to an Access 2007 (accdb) file in Visual Studio 2008

I'm in a college class using the Microsoft visual studio 2008 for visual basic and i have a project where i'm supposed to connect a database but it can't recognize the database file as a database. I followed the book exactly so i don't know what the problem is.

From stackoverflow

• You may need to install the Office 2007 Data Connectivity Components.

  (See also: this MSDN forum post)

• Check out http://connectionstrings.com/access-2007

  this site will tell you what connection string you need to connect to Access 2007. Make sure your connection string is OK. Also try using the server explorer in Visual Studio to connect to the file; just add a new connection pointing to the Access file and click the "Test Connection" button and you should be good to go. Hope that helps.

• Maybe you are a visual person: MSDN How Do I Video Series This helped me out when building in an Access database to a project. TableAdapters is what I did not know how to implement and after this tutorial, I was doing great.