Question : Microsoft Office Access Can't Save Design Changes or Save to a New Database object..

I have a Microsoft Access DB that is on our network and full rights exist for the groups involved.  However, when I open the DB first other users are not able to get in --A message appears that says opened exclusively by...  I am not opening it in exclusive mode, it is opening in shared.  If the other users open the DB first, then I can get in but none of us can save changes.  We get this error "Microsoft Office Access can't save design changes or save to a new database object because another user has the file open.  To save your design changes or to save to a new object, you must have exclusive access to the file".  We are definitely not in design mode.  We have a form that runs at start up (switchboard).  We do have some VB code in this DB.  However, it is not on the startup of any form.  It's command box driven.  We did add "Option Explicit" to the VB code and searched for querydef, controlsource and rowsource (none of these were in the code).  The version of Access is 2000.  We tried to do a brand new database, importing the tables, queries, reports and the main form.  However, this also failed to allow sharing.  Then, we created a new form, which also failed to allow for sharing.

Answer : Microsoft Office Access Can't Save Design Changes or Save to a New Database object..

When you say "save changes", what do you mean? Are you making changes to forms/reports/tables/queries? If so, you can't do this.

Are you sharing the database? In other words, does EACH user have their OWN copy of the database, or do you all open the same copy? Users should have their own copy of the database, and they should all share the "data file" - i.e. the tables and such. This is normally achieved by splitting the database into a "frontend" and "backend", where the backend contains tables, and the frontend contains everything else (forms, reports, etc). Each user would be give a frontend, and all frontends would connect to the same backend. Access includes a database splitter for this purpose (Tools - Database Utilities).

All users will need to be given full permissions on the folder hosting your datafile also (the "backend"). This is done through the Windows security model.