Word 2007 Missing User Level Securitty - ARRRGGGGHHHH What were they thinking?

Just discovered Access 2007 no longer supports user level security. What in the world are they doing here? Serious real-world applications very frequently need to restrict user's access to some but not all of the data in a system. For example, in a human resources application it is not at all unusual for clerical staff to need to view and update all the various elements of an employee's record EXCEPT for salary information while managers and only the managers should have the ability to view and edit the salary fields. And there can't be any backdoors allowed so that someone who who is allowed to only open a form that contains some of the fields in a data table would be able to view information they're not supposed to be privy to by opening a data*** view of the same table. Removing the ability to control exactly what users of the system are able to view and change seriously cripples Access usability as a line-of-business database application development platform. What am I missing here? Are there any workarounds to establish object level, table level, and field level priviledges in Access 2007 (other than sticking with Access 2003 or earlier file format) or are we stuck with an all or nothing scheme where anyone who is allowed to open the database at all has free rein to do anything in it they want to? I confess I am completely gob-smacked that MS could have done something so incredibly counter-productive!

Steve House
A 20-year veteran of database development in panic mode

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