You may have gotten an Excel file from someone, but you’re not able to edit it due to a strange Read-only notification. There are several ways to get around this problem, and like always, we are ...

If the file opens in read-only mode, you may still make changes and use the "Save As" command to save the file to a new name. Save the file in the Excel 2003 or 2007 format, but with a different name.

How to Read-Only on a Network in Excel. ... For instance, if you do not want to allow any changes to the workbook cells, click "Read-Only" next to the "Editing" section.