lock navigate pane in ms access

Question

We are working on a project in MS-Access 2010, where users will be using switchboard as a main menu for navigation and will work in forms. We protected each form with login and password so the user can only access his/her records in a form (using vba macro inside MS-Access).

Now we would like to lock the control pane so noone can access objects like tables and queries. Does anyone have an idea how to do it in MS-Access?

Thanks for any ideas.

Answer 1

Home>Options>CurrentDatabase>

uncheck 'Use Access special keys'

uncheck 'Display Navigation Pane'

And perhaps also:

uncheck 'Allow full menus'

uncheck 'Allow default shortcut menus'

build custom ribbon

make sure users don't know about shift key bypass or else distribute executable ACCDE

Answer 2

if you are looking to do this programatically, then this will do it:

Call DoCmd.LockNavigationPane(True)

however, you are probably better off hiding the navigation window and also following some of the suggestions by June7.

Answer 3

An easy solution couild be simply setting the forms modal property to true in the form opening event like so:

    Private Sub Form_Open(Cancel As Integer)
       ' Go Modal to Lock Navigation Pane
       Me.Form.Modal = True
       ' Hide Navigation Pane
       DoCmd.NavigateTo "acNavigationCategoryObjectType"
       DoCmd.RunCommand acCmdWindowHide
       ' Hide Ribbon
       DoCmd.ShowToolbar "Ribbon", acToolbarNo
    End Sub

Granted setting a form to Modal may not fit every situation but if you have a startup/ switchboard style form which opens all other forms then this could be a solution for you.