Don't struggle to pass strings. Instead, apply these five simple rules when working with embedded strings in VBA.

vba_RegexBasedStringClass Custom string class powered by Regex to search, replace, split and more Intention is to simplify use of strings with addition of string class which works similar to strings ...

Interestingly, this connection string WILL successfully open an XLS file, which is just confounding to me, as from what I can tell an XLS file should use "Excel 8.0" to be successful.