Copy Excel charts into Illustrator?

Hi All-
I NEED to get charts that I have created in Excel (Microsoft Excel 2008 for MAC, Version 12.1.1) into Adobe Illustrator (CS2, 12.0.1).
I have hundreds of charts to do this with, so remaking all of the charts in Illustrator isn't really feasible. In addition, I must include error bars which I don't think Illustrator is able to do.
I also need high resolution images (which I why was told I have to use Illustrator in the first place) that are publication quality.
PLEASE HELP - I have been spending hours trying to find a way to do this and have been unsuccessful.
Thanks everyone,
jenn

Mac OSX 10.5.7  CS4  Excel 2004 / but Excel-to-.ai worked with older configurations, too.
My work involves scientific journal illustrations, some of which come from Excel graphs. Once I have the graphs in Illustrator, I 'clean them up' -- as was mentioned on the Forum: Excel comes in with lots of repeated lines and icky rotated text blocks.
I understand a problem might exist with MS versions, etc. -- so --
I don't know if these little tricks will help your situation, or not, but this is what works for me.
I Open a blank RGB Illustrator page and shift it over to the right on the monitor.
Then I Open the Excel file with the graph and shift it over to left on the monitor -- so I can see both pages, I select the Excel graph by clicking on it once, making sure that I have the outermost 'Excel selection handles (black squares) selected, then I verrry sloooowwly move the Excel graph over to the Illustrator page with my mouse. You DO need some patience on this step: it needs to be done slowly and when you get to the Illustrator page you must (still) hold the mouse there for a while, until it copies over. The more 'lines' in the Excel graph, of course, the longer it takes. approx. 10 seconds, or so, for lots of data.
Once over in Illustrator, I discard all the extra lines and 'retype' any Excel-rotated text. Excel seems to put rotated text in a bit-map piece -- with the real (unrotated) text included nearby as a copy. I find the good copy (a few steps) and redo it so it 'reads correctly,' and toss the 'icky-bitmap/pixelated-rotated-text-block' that came from Excel.
I was so frustrated when some Excel graphs just would not 'move over' to my blank Illustrator page. Excel graphs are given to me from a variety of clients: some would copy, some would not. I finally discovered the problem -- and -- it starts with Excel. The Excel-to-Illustrator step would fail IF patterns were used in the Excel graphs. Once I changed any/all Excel-pattern-fills to shades of gray one-by-one (or color, probably ? [not tested by me yet]), I could then move graphs over to Illustrator just fine. Other 'Excel properties' may cause copy-failure also, perhaps? Just look around at the graph in Excel: even a pattern in a key/legend may be the culprit that causes failure in the transfer/move.
SciDot

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