How can I decrypt or gain access to a protected Access database?

Question

I've taken over an old software project which uses an MS Access database to store its data. However the database won't open in Access as it says:

"You do not have the necessary permissions to use the 'database.mdb' object. Have your system administrator or the person who created this object to establish the appropriate permissions for you."

But I have no idea how to do this and googling reveals almost nothing (it seems restricting access to Access databases it not something that's done very often!). The only other clue I've got is there's a .MDW (workgroup) file in the same folder, but I don't know if (or how) this relates to the main database as it has a different filename and also doesn't open.

How can I get access to this database? Is it likely to be password protected or just some kind of permissions problem?

Answer 1

The chances are pretty good that the .mdw file is the workgroup file for that .mdb database. (The .mdw file does not need to have the same name as the .mdb file because several different .mdb files can all share the same workgroup security settings.)

To access an .mdb file that has user-level (workgroup) security enabled you need to open it using a shortcut (or command-line invocation) of the form

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\MSACCESS.EXE" "C:\Users\Public\uls\ulsTest.mdb" /WRKGRP "C:\Users\Public\uls\Security.mdw"

For a more detailed write-up, take a look here.