Digital Security and Access 2003

[THWatson]

I have installed Access 2003 on my laptop computer, worked with a couple of databases, and kept them in Access 2000 format (the default).

In order to eliminate the annoying warning messages when opening a db, I applied a create-your-own Digital Signature (my own name).

Everything was fine until I copied a db across a network to my desktop computer which is still running Access 2000. Then I found that I could not view any VBA code.

The solution seems to be to remove any Digital Signatures and live with the annoying warning messages. And I can't seem to find any further information about using Access across a multi-user environment, where all computers aren't using Access 2003, whether saving in Access 2000 format or not.

Has anybody had any experience with this?

I am beginning to wonder whether using Access 2003 is more trouble than it's worth.

I would appreciate any feedback from what others have encountered.

Tom

 

[KenReay]

Hi

Yes I agree the Digital signature is an irratating 'feature',

I cannot say have experinced the same propbelms as your self, but for my first client to switch to A2003, what I have done is to create a digital signature on each PC, then when I deploy FE to each PC I 'refresh' the digital signature on each copy to the digital signature on the PC, using the tools\digital signiture\chooase option. This is only workable with this client becuase the number of users is small and located in a single office, there must be a better way to do it, if you had say 50 users in a large site it would be too time consuming to use my simple kludge.

Regards

Ken Reay
Freelance Solutions Developer
Boldon Information Systems Ltd
Website needs upgrading, but for now -

http://www.kenneth.reay.btinternet.co.uk

UK

 

[THWatson]

Ken
Thanks for your reply. I have discovered some other issues.

1. In Access 2000 there is a HasData property, to check to see whether or not a subreport has data. If you don't do that check and there is no data in the subreport you get a #Error. However, Access 2003 doesn't seem to have the HasData property, so any controls with that expression show up empty.
So here you have two computers, one running Access 2003, the other running Access 2000. Even though the file format is Access 2000 (the default), controls with the HasData property show properly on the computer running 2000 but show blank on the computer running 2003.
I could install Access 2003 on the second computer, and change the controls. That would solve my personal problem. But the problem would still exist if I make any updates to the FE of databases I have constructed for other people who are still running Access 2000.
I have searched the Microsoft Knowledge Base but cannot find a reference to HasData in Access 2003, or any work-around for that property. Perhaps 2003 doesn't require this data check, even in the 2000 format, but omitting it creates a disaster with computers running 2000.

2. I find the Help annoying. Anything beyond a rudimentary question requires connection to the Internet in order for Help to check Microsoft Office Online.

3. There are frequent crashes when closing a database. For no apparent reason that I can see.

So far, using Access 2003 has been a less than satisfactory experience.

Tom