Reflecting on this Chapter

First, you have seen how easy it is to change the startup options in your database by using Access menus. If you do use the menus , you will make it reasonably hard for the majority of users to get up to much mischief in your database. Unfortunately, every time you change a startup option, you make it harder for the developer to make changes to the software and objects in the database, which means that the additional security starts to add to the development costs. Therefore, I suggest that you experiment with each of the properties one at a time and see what effect it has on both your application and your development productivity.

Now that you know how to change the startup properties by using VBA code, you will find that you can enable the options for development and disable them for end users. In addition, another benefit of using VBA code is that you can disable that (not so clever) bypass key that allows people to use the database as they see fit. You can also combine workgroup security and VBA code to make sure that only users who have administration privileges in your database can change the startup options.

Finally, if you find that you would like the additional protection for your database and really haven't the time to research these issues in detail, you can import the demonstration form and Autokeys macro into your database. These tools give you a way to change the startup options all the time, regardless of the changes that you make. This approach provides secrecy , flexibility, and a good safeguard with little of the programming effort. That's my idea of low-cost security.