I've tried to get the same answer for quite some time and have been un-successful.
Excel is a spreadsheet no a database type file such as Access etc. Internal addressing schemes limit the number of rows to FFFFhex or 65,535.
If you're familiar with MS Access, Foxpro or Dbase etc. you're all set. If not there are alternatives.
If you don't need all the data in the Excel spread sheet at the same time, you could break the file into manageable pieces.
You could open the original file with MS Wordpad, highlite half the file then delete it. Save the file AS a new file- name.txt and open that new file into Excel, again providing it's less than 65536 rows.
If this works you can repeat the process and deal with the later half of the original file.
Hope this helps