help please. cant i ever use excel ?

i want to access excel from a form in vb for which i declared
Public anyvariable As Excel.Application
this does not seem to work.
what can i do to access excel data from a vb form. help please.

What is the returned error, have you set the reference to the Excel COM in Project->References?

Dim xclApp as Excel.Application
set xclApp = new Excel.Application
xclApp.Workbooks.Open FileName:="myfile.xls", ReadOnly:=true

is the microsoft excel 8.0 object library reference newer version of excel 7.0.
i have excel 8.0 object library.