While this won't actually prevent them from opening the files, you can turn off "F"ile scan access to the database directory. They will not actually be able to see the files when you do this.

Also, moving to a MS server will provide nothing over a Novell server if you still use fox tables.

>We currently have a Novell file server. In order for our users to be able to run our software (and in turn view and edit our tables on Novell) we have had to give our users read/write permissions on our tables.
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>However, this also enables any user to simply open any of our tables using Access or Excel.
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>We're just now beginning to look into alternatives. Migrating to a SQL Server backend would be a HUGE undertaking for us at this point in time. Are there smaller steps that can be taken to secure our files from being tampered with except via the code we write?
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>Grateful for any ideas!
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>P.S. As a side note, we are slowly moving away from Novell and have started some changes that will allow us to move to a Microsoft file server rather than Novell.