Occasionally my computer has shutdown while I've had an excel file
open (power failure, etc).  When I go back and try to open the file it
says its "locked for editing" by me, even though I obviously know I do
not have the file open.  My only solution is to open as read only and
save changes as a different file name.  Is there a way to "release"
this file so I can open it up again and keep using under the same
name?

The Newsgroup articles mentioned by PinkFreud are correct. 

When you run Excel, it writes a temporary file to tell it that a
particular workbook is open. When you close, it deletes that temporary
file. A crash prevents Excel from deleting the temporary file,
therefore, it insistes that the work book is still open.

After a crash, reboot, then clear out your Windows/Temp directory. You
may need to reboot again.

I forced a crash from Excel and this method did work.

Try the search strategy below and read the articles.

Search strategy:
Google Groups
Excel "file locked for editing" crash

- Hammer

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Request for Answer Clarification by tdub33-ga on 04 Mar 2003 09:41 PST

I cleared out the temp file and it still won't open.  However, I use
Windows 2000 and I see there's several temp folders (in WINNT,
documents and settings, local, etc.).  Could it be stored in one of
these?  Any idea what the .tmp file I'm looking for looks like?

---

Clarification of Answer by hammer-ga on 04 Mar 2003 10:52 PST

Windows 2000 will put it in 
c:\Documents And Settings\YourUserName\Local Settings\Temp

The file will be named something like: ~DF5AF.tmp

- Hammer

This series of newsgroup posts may be informative:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&th=f04299cd3dd95cdd&rnum=4