I received this email from my good customer Issac:

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I have created MDE files in the past. There are two problems.

1. You can still go behind the scenes and open Tables and Queries in design view but cannot open others like Forms or Reports in Design view. The green design triangle (icon)is shadowed.

2. To create MDE file for large databases you get the following error message: "This error is usually associated with compiling a large database into an MDE file. Due to the method used to compile the database, a considerable number of TableID references are created for each table. The Microsoft Jet database engine version 4.0 can only create a maximum of 2048 open TableIDs at one time. Exporting a database as an MDE potentially can exceed this limit if the database has a large number of objects (table, macro, form, report, etc). There is no accurate method to estimate the number of TableIDs the Jet database engine uses during the process of compiling a database as an MDE. However, each VBA module and each form uses one TableID, as a result, if the database has 500 forms, and each form's HasModule property is set to Yes, as many as 1,000 TableIDs are used". End of error message.

I know nothing about VBA and until your course warned me I have always included SPACES in file names.

But I have seen others Access Databases where you cannot click File Close, to get get behind the scenes, to look at Table and Query design. How are these Databases created? By design covered in your course or special program ?

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1. Yes, MDE files will still let users get at your tables, however there really isn't a GOOD way to prevent this anyway. The only way to really secure your data is with a database server. User-level security helps this a little, but it's still easily cracked.

2. You can get around this by splitting your database into multiple MDB files.

I'll be covering my super-secret special security in the next lesson since EVERYONE wants to see it. It's not perfect, but it does show you how to lock a lot of these objects up tighter than "normal" security.