Excel 2008 -- Illustrator CS3...possible?

Question

All previous versions of Office have allowed us to simply copy a chart in Excel, then paste into Illustrator for cleanup. Not so with Excel 2008 -- nothing happens when 'Paste' is selected. Nor has it worked to paste the chart into Word, re-copy, then paste into Illustrator. Nor to save as PDF and open in Illustrator (the chart is a jpeg, we need editable objects).
We do a *lot* of brochures/presentations for scientific companies, and prettifying data is a crucial part of what we do for them. For simpler graphs we can re-draw on top of a placed jpeg, but a lot of these companies produce data files with literally thousands of data points.
As a temporary fix we can downgrade back to Office 2004, but eventually that won't work. Is there an Office 2008 workaround?

Answer 1

The easiest work around I see is saving the graph/table as picture by right clicking on the object, selecting "Save As PIcture..." and saving it as a .pdf.
Then in Illustrator-> File- Open - yourfile.pdf. Every component within the object at that point should be selectable and editable. From there you can Select All and copy and paste the components of the object into whatever you are working on.
I used Illustrator for most of my graph layout stuff for papers and such and this little snag is definitely a pain. Those steps, though slightly more time consuming, do the trick without having to revert to office2004.
Hope that helps!
~T