Partially protected Excel spreadsheets import completely protected

I have been trying to import vendor supplied excel spreadsheets that have cell by cell protection. I am not supplied the password.
When these spreadsheets are read by excel, the individual entry blocks and form devices work properly.

When these spreadsheets are imported into LibreOffice Calc, the entire sheet is protected, and the cells which are editable in excel are protected in Calc, along with all the cells that are intended to be protected.

This appears to be a sheet by sheet issue, because many of these have several sheets that can be edited, but other sheets are completely protected.

Is there a workaround, assuming that I cannot acquire the passwords?

I Have the same issue, using LO 4.1.2.3, and I am confident this was not an issue in the 4.0 series as I was using the same document previously. I can reproduce this with two different documents from two different suppliers.
Do you still have this problem? Have you found a bug report? A work-around?

There is a bug report for this issue on the LibreOffice bug tracker:

Bug 70499 - FILEOPEN Cannot select unprotected cells in XSLX sheet with worksheet protection

I believe this corresponds to your problem. If so, could you mark it as affecting you too?

fdo#70499 Status: RESOLVED FIXED (LibreOffice 4.1.5 / 4.2.0)