cannot save an ods if other users have it opened in read-only

hello everyone!

I’ve got a situation where 1 user (let’s call him user A) is the only one that needs to edit a spreadsheet, and several others only need to read from it. I have therefore made a password protected file that opens in read-only, and by selecting the edit button and providing the password, user A is able to edit and save the file. this works fine, except when one of the other users has the file opened in read only. if user A tries to save the file, he gets an error of “general input/output” for the file location. this goes away if all the other users close their document, but since there are several users that may have the file opened in read-only, it is tedious to call each and everyone of them and ask them to close the document every time an edit has to be made.

I don’t have any idea why opening a file in read-only would lock the file up (frankly, I expected the default method was to make a copy in ram or temp folder and then close the connection to the file to free it up, but apparently that is not the case, or I have some settings wrong).

now for the actual question: is there a way to get around this and allow user A to edit and save the document even if the other users have the file open in read only? (of course, I do not expect the other users to see any new changes until they reopen the freshly saved document)

I do not really think it is relevant, but just in case: the file location is stored on a server, and not on any of the user’s computers, and all users have full permissions to the file.