Unfortunately, I agree with Lowell here. When you start trying to bombproof (I like that term) Excel importations, you're looking at VBA code which will open its own connection to the OLEDB and purposely IGNORE the drivers for excel data access.
This may sound silly but start with 100 rows (enough to fill the data sampler) and work up from there, see if you're finding an arbitrary data limit in memory that's goofing you up.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
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