Marc,
Not sure if this KB Q217174 describes your problem. Probably there's something else, since you get the same problem with TYPE XL5.
I've had problems appending Excel data on some occasions. But in my cases I got a "Error reading file" error and VFP didn't crash. I was never able to nail the problem down, but I think it was related to some special characters in the Excel file. I used automation as a work around.

>I need to append from Excel 2000 Workbook into a table.
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>When I try append from filename.xls xls Visual FoxPro just crashes out. I have also tried append from filename.xls xl5 and append from filename.xl8 with the same result.
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>I cannot save it as a worksheet as the Excel file is more then 16000 records and I lose data saving it as an Excel worksheet.
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>It works when there are only 230 rows in the Excel file but 250 plus and Visual FoxPro just crashes out.
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>I know I can save it as a tab delimited file if necessary and append it as such but I would prefer to be able to append it straight in from Excel.
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>Any advice would be appreciated.