>>>I might be wrong, but I thought there was a tool that allows importing XLS files without having Excel installed?
>>
>>Unzip the xlsx, and then in the xl subfolder there's sheet1.xml, sheet2.xml etc. Then read the xml and get the values.
>
>PMFJI, but how do you Unzip an xlsx file? I am using legacy pkzip25.exe but I can't figure what you mean.

Just like you unzip any other zip file, just

pkzip25 -ext=all -nofix -over=all whatever.xlsx