Access Cookbook

Secure Your Access Database

Problem

Youve created an Access database that you’d like to secure. The database contains some sensitive data to which you wish to limit access. You’d like to be able to create different classes of users, so that some users have no access to this data, others can read the data but can’t change it, and still others can modify the data. How can you accomplish this?

Solution

The Microsoft Jet database engine, which Access uses to store and retrieve its objects and data, employs a workgroup-based security model that allows you to secure your Access databases, assigning permissions to users and groups. Access supports two mechanisms for securing your database: the database password feature and user-level security. The database password feature is an all-or-nothing proposition—users who know the password aren’t restricted in any way once they’re in the database. If you want to assign varying permissions to different users, you’ll need user-level security. User-level security is fairly complex—it doesn’t work if you leave out a step. It consists of creating a new workgroup file (which holds user, group, and password information) and then using this new workgroup file to secure the database. There is a Security Wizard built into Access that will help you secure your database, but you can also manually perform the process, which will help you understand what’s happening.

User-level security relies on a special database, called a workgroup file, to store users, ...