>....What I need to do is convert this routine to open the excel file without excel installed and still push the variable values in and have the macro run and return column D. ....

I don't think this is gonna work. oExcel has to be defined/created somewhere, and with out the Excel app on that machine......

My guess is that you would be better off chasing the idea of writing a function in FoxPro that does the calculations described in the Excel help file for the Rate function:
"Returns the interest rate per period of an annuity. RATE is calculated by iteration and can have zero or more solutions. If the successive results of RATE do not converge to within 0.0000001 after 20 iterations, RATE returns the #NUM! error value." etc....

HTH,