As John noted, OLEDB is the right way to go for getting data out of Excel without actually opening Excel. But you shouldn't need Access at all. You can query Excel using OLEDB. When you say 'excel files', are you saying that they're .xlsx/.xls files? How is it possible for the file to be too big to open in Excel? How large are these files? How many rows/columns/characters?
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Dave Morris
Cano Ai
Atlanta, GA
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Dave Morris, 3Ci at Southern Company