Download In Excess Of 65536 Rows

i'm working with downloading data from our server. it downloads in excel 3.0 format, and the contents exceed the 65k cap by far.

now what i used to do for this when i had 2003 installed on my machine, i would open the 3.0 format file and convert it to 2003 format so i could import it into access, where i could move it into two 2003 xls files to manage by use of copy/paste from access's table to excel's spreadsheet. The 3.0 > 2003 conversion was necessary because if i try to import a 3.0 excel file into access 2003, it gives me a error that the file contains no data.

so here is my problem now. our office just updated to 2007. it appears that when you run the conversion option to 2007 format, OR just save as... and save it to a new xlsx, it stripps off the remaining data that overstacks the 3.0 format file. everything above row 65536 is lost (and this paticular file has 77k+ rows).

so i decided... "ok then i'll do it my old way". i saved it into 2003 format instead, just as i used to, and imported it into access, and guess what? it stripps it in that format too now! (the majesty of upgrades... buggs to year 2010).

so my question is... how do i get this 3.0 overstacked file format converted to xlsx format retaining ALL 77k rows in a single sheet, or how do i strip it into 2 separate xls 2003 format files? either way will work, i just need all my data so i can work with it.