Access Files Located on an “Untrusted Site”
If you recently installed Internet Explorer 7 you may have started seeing the following error message when opening up Microsoft Access files:
“Microsoft Access cannot open this file. This file is located outside of your intranet or on an untrusted site.”
You can make this go away by opening up IE 7 and going to “Internet Options” under the “Tools” menu. Go to the “Security” tab and select “Local Intranet” then hit the “Sites” button. Uncheck the box marked “Automatically detect intranet network.” Apply the new settings and your Access database should open without problems.
This doesn’t work in my case. Here’s what I posted on dbforums:
I’m setting up a small network at work, have a Windows Server 2003 server as a file server and a number of PCs which map a drive to a folder there. I did a full Windows Update on the user PCs, which installed SP2, Internet Explorer 7, and more.
When I try to run a .mdb that resides on the server, I get, as described above:
Microsoft Access cannot open this file.
This file is located outside your intranet or on an untrusted site. Microsoft
Access will not open the file due to potential security problems.
To open the file, copy it to your computer or an accessible network location.
I don’t get the checkbox in the properties, as described. Also, I tried a lot of combinations of things in Internet Options’ Local Intranet and Trusted Sites to no avail.
So, I tried uninstalling IE7 and it’s 2 updates (KB931768 and KB928090), which took 3 restarts, thank you Microsoft, and then I could open the .mdb and got no error messages.
Only problem now is I can’t do Automatic Updates any more because it automatically re-installs IE7. I have to do custom update and avoid doing IE7 and it’s updates.
Seems like Microsoft really screwed up on this one. All the verbage about web sites when I’m only dealing with files! Really poor if you ask me.
Comment by Mark — May 15, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
Just had the same problem today and found the simple answer here:
http://mcobit.business.nd.edu/kb/kb.cfm?Action=questiononly&qid=425
It is a security thing for Win XP that is controlled through IE.
Comment by She.Rex — May 17, 2007 @ 2:25 pm
Just to be clear - the drive I needed was mapped to the letter O, so after unchecking the box at the bottom, I typed O:\ and the name of the folder I needed. In the box below appeared the actual location of the drive over the network. No fancy drive names with lots of backslahes needed.
Hope this is helpful.
Comment by She.Rex — May 17, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
Hi! Yep, I used to have this error all the time! So annoying!!! uf.
Comment by liliann — October 30, 2007 @ 7:50 am
We got this message all the time and we even hired a local computer tech who is in the business to solve this problem for us and after 4 hours at $70.00 per hour the problem was still there.
I followed your instructions and we are now able to open all access databases on all computers on our network.
Thanks
Comment by Ron — November 13, 2007 @ 10:51 am
The suggestions above didn’t work for me - but this did:
Navigate to where you have saved the file on your machine. Right Click the .mdb file and select properties. Near the bottom of the window click on UNBLOCK. It was like magic!
Comment by Debbie — January 16, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
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