If I have BV installed on a server without MS Office installed, the import/export options for spreadsheet are greyed out. I can understand this for the export, but is there a way to still import import if you bring in a spreadsheet form the outside?

It's a difference of read/write. I could install the MS Excel viewer for free to read the .xls file I'd want to import, but the option still remains greyed out in BV. I'm wondering if there isn't some registry hack I could do to change that. 

I know the spreadsheet can be saved as a .csv file and imported as text in BV, but I'm trying to bypass that step.