I had a question today from a customer that I thought you could all benefit from. Ms. Customer had an Excel file that, once completed, she put in a shared folder on her file server. She did not care of other users saw the file, however, she did not want any users to make changes to the file. You can suggest, but not require, that users open a document as read only. If a user opens the document as read-only and changes it, that person can save the document only by giving it a different file name.
On the Tools menu, click Options.
Click Security.
Select the Read-only recommended check box, and then click OK.
Click Save.
It’s as simple as that!