Changes To Group Permissions Don't Work

[Roger Tregelles]

Hi Folks,

I have a secured Workgroup on the network that I setup a while ago based on
the suggestions in the book, "Real World Microsoft Access Database
Protection and Security" by Garry Robinson. Per his recommendation I removed
the Admin from the Admin group and do not allow access to my database
backends on the network to the User group. I created three groups when I
made this workgroup; 1. Developer; 2. Writers and 3. Viewers with the
obvious associated permissions. All of my other databases work fine with
this workgroup as it was setup. Well, I just created a new database and
placed the backend on the network with the permissions set appropriately,
and MDE frontends for the users. When I rolled out the frontend on one users
PC (who had only Viewer group rights), I realized that I needed to add them
to the Writers group so they could read, update, insert and delete data. I
went into Access on my PC and using the User and Group Accounts window added
them to the Writers group. I then tried to execute some commands in the
frontend on their PC and got obvious security errors. I went back into the
database backend and opened the User and Group Permissions window to make
sure the Writer group had the ability to read, update, insert and delete
data, which the group did. However when I changed the List view from Groups
to Users and looked at the permissions for the user in question (who was now
added to the Writers group) all of the permissions were unchecked. I checked
a few more users in the Writer group and all of them too had the permissions
that I had setup for this group unchecked. I verified the same thing by
using the Access 2002 Security Manager add-in. What am I doing wrong here? I
was always taught to make changes to permissions to the Group and not the
User. Why won't the permissions set to a group of which a user is a member
show up correctly here? Is there a easier, better and simpler way to manage
all of this than the built in Microsoft Access security tools? Any help,
advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Roger Tregelles
Quality Assurance Engineer

 

[Joan Wild]

The security dialogs (Tools, Security, Permissions) only show you explicit
permissions.

I other words, if you assign permissions to Groups (recommended), they will
show up for the group. A user that is a member of that Group, will inherit
the permissions of the Group, however they won't show on the dialog for the
'User' as these are 'implicit' permissions.

 

[Roger Tregelles]

Joan,

Thanks for that information, it does makes sense. Do you know of any easier
way to manage Users, Groups and Permissions that the default tools in Access
2003? It's a pain to have to select one item at a time (tables, queries,
forms, reports, macros, etc.) and click Apply rather than selecting an
entire group and clicking apply only once. I was thinking of getting the
Access Workbench from Garry Robinson (www.vb123.com) but I don't believe you
can change the security settings using this program either. Thanks again for
your help with this.

Roger Tregelles
Quality Assurance Engineer

 

[Keith Wilby]

Do you know of any easier
way to manage Users, Groups and Permissions that the default tools in
Access
2003? It's a pain to have to select one item at a time (tables, queries,
forms, reports, macros, etc.) and click Apply rather than selecting an
entire group and clicking apply only once.

You can select all (for example) queries by holding the shift key.

HTH - Keith.
www.keithwilby.com

 

[Joan Wild]

The object list box is a multi-select one - ctrl-click or shift-click and
you can select multiple objects and then the permissions/apply.