User manual

128 FileMaker Pro User’s Guide
3. Decide if you want to enable the Guest account, which permits users to open the file without specifying
account information.
4. Create the privilege sets that you need in the file.
5. Determine if you need to enable any extended privileges for certain privilege sets.
Don’t enable extended privileges unless they’re needed.
6. Create the accounts you need in the file, and assign the appropriate privilege set to each account.
For more information, see the next section. If you’re using the Guest account, assign a privilege set to it
as well. Otherwise, disable the Guest account.
7. Open the file using different accounts and test each privilege set that you created. Make sure the
restrictions work the way you want, and make any needed corrections to your privilege sets.
8. Optionally limit other files from accessing the schema of your file by using the File Access tab. For more
information, see
“Authorizing access to files” on page 134.
Password-protecting a file
If you have a non-shared database file on your computer and you want to prevent others from opening it,
you can password-protect the file.
After password-protecting a file, you will be prompted to enter an account name and password every time
you open the file. Anyone who does not know this account information will not be able to open the file.
To password-protect a file:
1. Make the following changes to the accounts in the file:
1 Edit the Admin account so that it has a different account name, a password, and uses the Full Access
privilege set.
1 Make sure the Guest account is inactive.
1 Delete any other accounts in the file or make them inactive.
2. If necessary, edit the Full Access privilege set to allow yourself any extended privileges you may want
for yourself.
Don’t enable extended privileges unless they’re needed.
Suggestions for creating secure passwords
1 Secure passwords are typically eight or more characters in length, and include at least one numeric character.
1 If the file is shared via web publishing, account names and passwords can only use characters included in
the ISO Latin-1 character set (except colons). To avoid characters that may be interpreted incorrectly over
the web, you may want to limit account names and passwords to alphabetic and numeric characters only.
For more information about protecting FileMaker Pro databases, see Help.