Access 2003 VBA Programmer's Reference

16.5. User-Level Security

The most advanced security provided in Access 2003 is the user-level security. This method permits you to grant permissions to groups of users and/or to specific users for each object in a database. Objects include tables, queries, forms, reports, and macros, as well as the database itself.

Since user-level security is the most advanced form of security, it requires additional explanation. Thorough planning and documentation will be invaluable to set up and maintain user-level security.

User-level security does not override shared-level security. User-level security will require the user to log on to use a database in Access. However, if the user opens a shared-level protected database, the user will also have to know the password to that database. Also, as with shared-level security, user-level security does not prevent the data from being viewed using tools other than Access. So again, one option is that the database can be encoded to prevent viewing the data from other tools such as Windows Notepad.

16.5.1. Main Components of User-Level Security

There are two main components of user-level security in Access 2003:

• The MDW file, commonly referred to as the WIF.

• The database that is to be secured.

With these two main components, there are two primary steps necessary to secure a database with user-level security:

• Create or update the MDW file to define user groups and users.

• Set up the database to grant user groups or individual users of the MDW file specific ...