Access 97 will not import an excel file

After a reinstall of Access 97 (Office Pro) after getting a VBA error, now when going into File…Get External Data, an xls file is not an option in the file types box so we can’t get an Excel spreadsheet imported. The Excel driver is in the ODBC in control panel. We also uninstalled and reinstalled Office 97 Pro. When using the Custom install, the option to check the Excel driver in Data Access is greyed out and says Installed to the right. I don’t know what else to try. We installed Access 2002 and that fixed the problem, but the databases are shared with other users who use Access 97 and they don’t want to upgrade. There must be a way to fix this………