Workgroup Files - Opening Databases with Shortcut Files

A reader of my book on Access Protection and Security wrote in

I'm new to MS Access security and protection so I just purchased your book "Microsoft Access Database Protection and Security".

My situation is that I've created a new workgroup and have inputted a username/password for the Admin. Now every time I open a database (any database), I'm prompted for this username/password.

My question is, how do I make the new workgroup I created only applicable to one database, as such keeping SYSTEM.MDW the default for all other databases on my PC.

Thanks so much and look forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards,

David

Note: The book is great, I will definitely recommend it to my peers

Summary:

To answer this question, there are 3 ways that you can tackle this problem. First is to keep using you new workgroup file and setup a simple password for the admin account. That way when you are prompt to open other databases, it is relatively easy to switch between the two accounts. In this case the admin account will work for both the secured and unsecured databases. The second way is setup a shortcut file for your secured database and revert to using the default workgroup file for the rest of your databases (see description below). This is generally faster but you must use the shortcut if you want full permissions on the secured database. The third way is use our Workbench product. This allows you to setup all your workgroup files and accounts and to then allocated them to files in the favorites list.

Setting Up Workgroup File Shortcuts

This is an excerpt from chapter 10 of my book on Access Protection and Security.

If our world were simple, there would be only one database to open and protect. In this world, we could install Access on an end user’s computer and use the workgroup administrator to join to a workgroup file. We could then train users to open Access and select the first database on the most recently used list, and DBAs would have a relatively simple time of it. Of course, the world isn’t that simple, as most Access sites have many Access databases and sometimes more than one workgroup security file for each user. This section of the chapter shows you how to use special commands in shortcut files to circumvent these issues. It also shows a more secure way of using Access VBA code to open databases that are protected by workgroups, or even those that aren’t.

Irrespective of your current development and users’ workgroup arrangements, it is a good idea to understand how to use shortcut files to start Access because they will provide you with a quick way to open your database with a workgroup file. Unfortunately, if you don’t get on top of the quick and simple ways to switch workgroups and databases, you will forever be gnashing your teeth when you or your users open a database while connected to the wrong workgroup file.

Using shortcut files is good because people only join the workgroup for the session. If you combine this measure with menu-specific startup options, protected menus, and toolbars (see Chapter 7), users will not as easily be able to open the backend database by using the workgroup file. The shortcut file helps protect the back-end database because users have to close Access and, hence, lose their association with the workgroup file. In the Access help guide, shortcut commands are referred to as startup command-line options. Access has quite a number of these options, but for the purposes of protecting the database, the ones that I will cover follow:

/wrkgrp. Starts Access by using the specified workgroup information file.
/user. Starts Access by using the specified user name.
/pwd. Starts Access by using the specified password.

Creating a Shortcut File

If you want to create a shortcut file, you must first include the path to the Access executable on your computer. The way that I like to do this is to find the Access executable (MSAccess.exe), which is generally located in the Program Files folder on your computer. Now right-click the MSAccess.exe executable and choose Send To ~ Desktop (Create Shortcut). (The sample demonstrated in Figure 10-14 is from
Windows XP.) Now switch to your Desktop, which you can do quickly by pressing the Windows key and the D key together.
  << Click to enlarge
Book Figure 10-14. Right-clicking the Access executable to send a shortcut to the desktop.

To customize the shortcut on the Desktop, right-click it and choose Properties, as shown in Figure 10-15. The first item that you want to add to the target line is the full path to the database, which should occur directly after the path to the executable. Once the shortcut to the database works, you can start adding the commandline options. To demonstrate, I will show you a command line that will open a copy of the Northwind back-end database with a workgroup file and the Editor user (described in the section “Trusting Your Users by Adopting the Same Workgroup”).

You should organize these commands together in the shortcut’s target field. As you can see, after each argument is entered, you need to leave a single space before putting the required entry in the line. These shortcuts can be a bit cumbersome to build and test, so you should add each item one at a time.

C:\MSOfficeXP\Office10\MSACCESS.EXE c:\data\Northwind_be.mdb
/wrkgrp c:\developer.mdw /user editor

NOTE: If a workgroup file or database is in a folder that has spaces in the name, you will need to enclose the path to the file in double quotes.

  << Click to enlarge

Book Figure 10-15. Modifying the target line of the shortcut by right-clicking the shortcut file.

Another thing that I like to do at sites where multiple users use the same computer
is to enter the name of the user account that has the least permissions as
part of the path. That way, even if the user may have found out the password of a
higher-level account, the interface may persuade them to use the lower-level
account anyway.


Author: Garry Robinson

Other Pages at VB123.com That You May Want To Visit

Duplicate Data Entry For Access
Microsoft FreeStuff
Take Advantage Of The Class Module Features Of Your Access Forms

Are Your Workgroup Files Built Using The Correct Version

Opening a workgroup file that was created with an older version of Access is not so efficient.  ie if it was built with Access 97 and you are using Access 2003.

How do you find this out?

Open Access 2000+, choose menu File then Open and navigate to the workgroup file. When it opens, if it says "You cannot make changes to the database objects in this database" then you have an old workgroup file.

To convert to a newer workgroup file is impossible, you have to recreate it from scratch as per this kb.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824258

For that you are going to need the Name, Organization and ID that you used to create the original file.  You are also going to need the PIDs of the usernames or you may as well stick with the slightly slower old workgroup file.

 

Click on the button for the next help page in this Access Loop.