Accounts authenticate users who are attempting to open a protected file. Each account specifies an account name and (usually) a password. Any user that cannot specify valid account information won’t be able to open a protected file. Each file initially contains two accounts: Admin and Guest.

You may want to create an account for every individual who accesses a file, or you may want to create a few accounts that are shared among many individuals, such as a "Marketing" account and a "Sales" account:

See Managing accounts and About the Admin and Guest accounts.

A privilege set specifies a level of access to a database file. When you create a privilege set, there are many options available that you can use to limit database access, such as which layouts are viewable, which menus are available, and whether printing is permitted. Privilege sets can also restrict access to particular tables, records, or fields within a file. Each account is assigned a privilege set, which determines the level of access when someone opens a file using that account.

You can create as many privilege sets as you need to define the types of access you want to permit to a file. Each database file contains three predefined privilege sets for common types of access levels.

See Using the predefined privilege sets and Creating and editing privilege sets.

Extended privileges determine the data sharing options that are permitted by a privilege set, such as whether a privilege set permits users to open a shared file or view a database in a web browser. See Editing extended privileges for a privilege set and Creating and editing extended privileges.

A user who attempts to open or access a protected file will be prompted to provide account information. If the privilege set for the account does not permit the type of extended privilege access the user is requesting, the user will get an error indicating that he or she cannot access the file in that way.

All extended privileges except fmreauthenticate10 are disabled by default, even in the Full Access privilege set.

Enabling extended privileges only makes it allowable for certain privilege sets to access shared data. To access the shared data, you must also set up sharing for the type of access that you want. See Sharing files on a network, Using ODBC and JDBC with FileMaker Pro, or Publishing databases on the web.

The privileges that you set up apply to a single file only and all tables within that file. If your database solution consists of multiple files that you want to protect, you may want to combine all of these files into one multitable file. Then you can define privileges in only a single file to manage access to the entire database solution. If you don’t want to combine the files into one file, then you should define privileges in each file that contains items you want to protect.

If you have a multifile database solution that includes multiple protected files, consider using identical account names and passwords in each protected file. When one protected file attempts to access another protected file (such as to access related data or execute a script in the second file), FileMaker Pro initially attempts to open the second file with the same account name and password that was used to open the first file. If there is a matching account name and password, FileMaker Pro skips displaying Open dialog box. If there is no matching account, then FileMaker Pro displays the Open dialog box so the user can enter account information.