Access security question.

[Chelsea7]

Hello everyone,

I have a question about the security feature in Access 2003. I've created a simple program that generates notification letters. I set up the accounts for users to log in.Now I ran the security wizard and created the accounts so that users must logon. I moved the *.mdw file to the shared network drive. Now the security feature works on my computer, forcing the user to logon. However, when another user runs the program from their computer, Access does not prompt the user to logon. The user simply goes straight into the program. Does anyone know why this is happening? Is there another file that needs to be moved to the shared directory?

 

[JBinQLD]

G'day Chelsea,

You need to configure the users installations of msaccess to use the .mdw file.

Go to a machine, start access, click on Tools menu, Security -> Workgroup Administrator...

click the Join button and browse to the .mdw file you've put on the network.

Test and hopefully repeat for each user...

That should sort it for ya, Good luck!

JB

 

[CharlieT302]

It sounds as if the Admin user account was not disabled. You need to create an alternate administrative user account complete with password. Log into Access with the new account. Create a blank dbase and import all objects from your dbase into it. This sets the new Administrative account as the owner (and gaurantees all permissions). Remove the default Admin user from the Users group and strip both of all rights.

It sounds as if this was not done. By default, the Admin user account is present with the System.mdw file that all dbase files use. It is also a part of the Users group, and maintains all rights. Therefore, if you fail to remove it from Users and strip it of all permissions, someone else can easily open the file the default system.mdw. This is because their Admin is still in tact with all rights and your system (this is what I am guessing) never stripped Admin of permissions.

You should also strip all permission from the Users group. Create alternate group accounts with the desired permissions. Place the appropriate user accounts in the new groups.

I also would not use the Security Wizard. I am not sure about now, but in the past it has been shown to leave security holes. I believe this might be what you are seeing.

By default, Admin (user) and Admins (group) and Users (group) accounts have full permissions. This is why you should use only custom accounts to prevent others from gaining access into the dbase.

This is a "Brief" description of what should be done. Please read up on security before you employ it or you could lock everyone out of the system. This is also another reason to create the new copy (from above). You could always rejoin the default system.mdw file and open the original dbase and start the security over again.