Wizard not creating shortcut (Joan Wild please)

[Jen]

I ran through the instructions provided by Joan Wild
(http://www.jmwild.com/security02.htm) on my work laptop at home and
everything worked fine.
I am now trying to do the same process on my pc at work and the shortcut is
not being created so I cannot access the secure db.

Any thoughts here as to why the shortcut is not being created?

Thanks. Jen

 

[Joan Wild]

You may have clicked through the wizard steps a bit too quickly, and missed the checkbox to create a desktop shortcut.

No matter, you can do it yourself:
1. Start, Search... and locate msaccess.exe on your computer.
2. Right-click the file it finds and choose Send To...Desktop as Shortcut.
3. Go to the desktop and locate this shortcut. Right click it and choose rename and give it any name you wish.
4. Right-click it again and choose properties. The properties dialog will open to the Shortcut tab.
5. The 'target' item will have the path to msaccess.exe filled in. Click at the end of that path and add a space followed by...
"path to frontend" /wrkgrp "path to secure mdw"

Those paths need to be enclosed in double quotes as shown.

 

[Jen]

Thanks Joan. Here is a little bit more that I tried before your response.

When I followed your steps and put the mdw file on my C drive, the shortcut
shows on my desktop, but if I put the mdw file in a sharproj folder (so
others can use the secured db) the shortcut does not show up anywhere.

So, how can I make this work putting the secure db and all associated files
in a sharproj folder?
I want to be able to send the db via email for users to detach and save to
their desktops (they already have access to the sharproj folder).

Thanks.
Jen

 

[Joan Wild]

I assume that you have split the mdb and the secure mdw and the backend will reside in the sharproj folder (which everyone has read/write/create/delete permission to).

As long as everyone has Access installed in the same location and they put the frontend in the same location on their computer, then you can create a shortcut (it's just a file with a lnk extension) and they can copy the shortcut file to their desktop.

The shortcut target would have
"path to msaccess.exe" "path to frontend" /wrkgrp "path to secure mdw"

eg:
"C:\program files\microsoft office\office11\msaccess.exe" "c:\database\frontend.mdb" /wrkgrp \\servername\sharproj\secure.mdw

You can use the UNC pathname for the mdw, and then you needn't worry about users having the same drive mappings

 

[Jen]

THANK YOU!!!! I have sent the link to someone to try out!