I agree that the conversion programs that Borislav and Tore cited are better in several ways, but I just wanted to show a quick way of converting the files without having to do a lot of coding (or modifying the code shown). That way, other programmers can add this function to their code and not worry about maintaining it.
I also find it interesting that, in the same versions of Office, you can save a 97-2003 XLS file that is readable and one that isn't readable by FoxPro. To me, that shows that Microsoft didn't need to make Excel corrupt the XLS files.

Jerry