Access 2007 - Lock users out of form design mode

Question

Is there a way to lock users out of being able to view and edit a form in design mode in Access 2007?

Answer 1

One way to approach it is distributing a ACCDE file to users.

• Database Tools... Make ACCDE
• Save your Database as an .accde file for distribution.

Here's the description from the Access help files:

An .accde file is the Office Access 2007 version of the .mde file in earlier versions of Access. It is a locked-down version of the original .accdb file. If the .accdb file contained any VBA code, only the compiled code is included in the .accde file — as a result, the VBA code cannot be viewed or modified by the user. Also, .accde file users do not have permissions to make design changes to forms or reports.

This allows you to keep the original ACCDB file, while providing user access to the ACCDE file. Of course, this implies creating a new ACCDE file whenever a change is made to the ACCDB. For this reason, you might want to keep your data in a separate, linked ACCDB database and your forms in the ACCDE. This will allow you to replace the ACCDE files at any moment without losing any data.

Answer 2

Another option is to ONLY allow the users to use the Access Runtime, which disables ALL designing tools. It's free and doesn't require a separate copy of Office Professional or Microsoft Access to run