Excel 97/2003 format is not compatible with VFP XL8. You have to either save it as Excel 5.0/95 or use Excel ODBC driver as shown in mskb #949529
Importing data from a Microsoft Excel 2007 workbook using Visual FoxPro 9.0

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>I create an XLS file using Office 2007 but telling it to create a 97/2003 format file. This file will not import into VFP9 using
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>APPEND FROM myfile.xls TYPE XL8
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>It says the file is not in a valid format. Any ideas or suggestions about this?