Thanks Michel
I had seen this link before but i misunderstood the steps needed.
for some reason, i'm getting the questions in, but none of the labels. i'm going to have to tweak the XML i guess to get that working. to make matters more interesting, it's a bi-lingual questionnaire 
Or if that doesn't work, i'll adjust the XLS form to be simpler and have less formatting options. maybe that'll help
thanks again
Mazz