Good evening all the peeps of the Excel Community.
This one has me completely flammuxed but hopefully someone can spot my
obvious error that I can't ...

I have a workbook with 26 sheets. At some time, I know I password protected
it ... somehow. Each time I open my workbook, it asks me "xxx.xls' is
reserved by Joe Bloggs. Enter password for write access, or open read only."

I have been through each and every one of the 26 sheets using Tools -
Protection to unprotect but none are protected, nor are any Workbook
protected.

My only guess is that at some stage, I have protected a sheet then later
deleted it, thus removing my ability to unprotect the whole lot. I don't know
if this is possible or realistic or not, but its all I can come up with all
by myself.

I've used a couple of the password cracking appplications listed in this
community by folk much smarter than me, but they all come back saying there
are no passwords or workbook is unprotected.

Its a workbook I've built up over 5 years and is just over 4mb in size, so I
would really like to not lose it, or have to re-enter it.

Please please please suggestions this way forth ...