It is TRUE, that files you mark as "Read-Only" on your own computer can be
opened without a prompt.

However, we had an Oracle database where I worked a few years ago. It had a
Visual Basic UI that allowed us to fetch data "snapshots" of the data,
which were written to a multi-tabbed Excel workbook. The files were made
Read-Only by the Visual Basic UI and stored on a network file server. This
was done to prevent us data analysts from accidentally changing the data
while working with the files. These files would always prompt us for the
password, unless we opened them using the "Open Read-Only" option in the
drop-down combo box for the Open button in the Open dialog box.

I used the code that I posted previously to get around this annoying delay
every time we opened one of these files.

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Regards,
Bill Renaud