xlsm startup error personal.xlsm in XLStart

I was recieving an error:

personal.xlsm is locked for editing

by ‘user’

Open ‘Read-Only’ or click ‘Notify’ to open read-only and recieve notification when the document is no longer in use.

 everytime I opened excel and the error was related my personal.xlsm file which was located in the XLStart folder.  When I finally researched it I realized that, probably due to a computer crash, .xlsm file was still stuck “open”.  When I navigated to the folder I noticed the ~$personal.xlsm still existed even when excel was closed. 

Once I deleted this file the problem went away.