Can I restrict users from design view in Access 2003?

Question

Can I prevent users from opening an access 2003 database in design view? I don't want others to be able to change structure of the tables, just add change or delete the records within the table.

Answer 1

One thing you could pretty easily use to accomplish this is to use the user-level-access. In Microsoft Access you can setup a workgroup (which is completely un-related to Windows networking). The workgroup uses encryption to set a key for your database. In your workgroup you can setup users, and grant users various levels of permissions to objects. You can completely block them from creating or modifying forms. You can prevent them from modifying the design of tables and other objects, but still permit them to create/replace/update/delete data.

Here some links with details.

• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/set-or-change-access-2003-user-level-security-in-access-2007-HA010166227.aspx
• http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/types-of-permissions-mdb-HP005188594.aspx
• http://www.databasedev.co.uk/permissions.html

Another thing you can do that is easier then messing around with access permissions is to set the database properties to open a default form, and block design changes. When you enable these per-database features you will not be able to change the design of anything. Unless you disable it, you can bypass the design-only restriction and default form by holding down the left shift key when you open up the database.

See this link.

• http://allenbrowne.com/ser-43.html

Answer 2

Why not just get those users a copy of the Microsoft Access Runtime which can access forms, table data and so on, but completely lacks all of the design features.

Typically this means your Office site installation could be cheaper as you only need full copies of Access for those who need it, rather than everybody.