Suppose you want to examine the contents of an untrusted Access database.
It seems there should be a way to open it in Access with macros and VBA disabled.
Searching around the web, I've found several options which aren't quite right:
- Hold down Shift to suppress any Autoexec macro or Startup form. No good because (unbelievably) it can be bypassed.
- Set macro security level to Medium. The only options it gives you are Cancel and Open. There's no "open with scripting disabled".
- "Sandbox mode" ie "block unsafe expressions". No good, most scripts still run.
- KB article How to turn off Visual Basic for Applications when deploying Office 2003 or Office XP gives 5 options which are just variations on two methods:
- uninstall (or don't install) VBA. Too drastic. I still want to examine the code I might or might not want to run.
- Set a "VBAOff" registry value, equivalently through either Policy or
regedit
. This works for all Office applications except Access!
Does anyone have any other ideas? I'm using Access 2003.