From the 2003 Help file:
"The simplest method of protection is to encode the database. Encoding a
database compacts the database file and helps protect it from being read by
a word processor. Encoding a database that employs no security measures has
no effect, because anybody can open the database and gain full access to all
objects in the database. Encoding is particularly useful when you transmit a
database electronically, or when your store it on floppy disk, tape, or
compact disc.
"Before you can encode or decode a Microsoft Access database, you must be
either the owner (owner: When security is being used, the user account that
has control over a database or database object. By default, the user account
that created a database or database object is the owner.) of the database
or, if the database employs security measures, a member of the Admins group
(Admins group: The system administrator's group account, which retains full
permissions on all databases used by a workgroup. The Setup program
automatically adds the default Admin user account to the Admins group.) of
the workgroup information file (workgroup information file: A file that
Access reads at startup that contains information about the users in a
workgroup. This information includes users' account names, their passwords,
and the groups of which they are members.) that contains the accounts used
to help protect the database. You must also be able to open the database in
exclusive (exclusive: A type of access to data in a database that is shared
over a network. When you open a database in exclusive mode, you prevent
others from opening the database.) mode, which means you must have Open/Run
and Open Exclusive permissions (permissions: A set of attributes that
specifies what kind of access a user has to data or objects in a database.).
"Decoding a database reverses the encoding."
I'd just add that while Access databases tend to compress extremely well
into Zip files, encoding a database means that you will no longer realize
any space savings using Zip.
