Sburke, Thank you for posting a question that I have thought about off and on. I don't use excel (have never been a fan of MS) but, I did search for an answer for OpenOffice. I found this solution that you may be able to convert to excel. The two programs are very close in operation. But OO is free, has a great support group and can read/convert excel files.
Thanks again for reminding me of a question I had.
Paul