Your description is a little confusing. In Excel, you can password protect
the file with two options- password to open, password to modify, in addition,
you can password protect a sheet, or parts of a sheet. Which one or ones do
you have?

Are you saying that now no one can open the file, even with the password?
If you want others to edit the file, can't you just give them the password?

It also sounds like someone, somewhere, may have the file open and that's
why it's read only. You could look at Open Files on the server to see who
has it open.
(right click my computer / manage / shared folders / open files)

"havenlad" wrote:

A user has a password to get into it to make changes to the
spreadsheet. When the user makes changes to the spreadsheet and then closes
out of it no one else can get into the file to make changes. They can go in
as read only but cannot get in to write to spreadsheet, the original person
who created the file is not able to get into the file at all. Without
creating a new spreadsheet, is there a way the user who has edit pemissions
can allow others same permission?