I'm very surprised to learn that, using ODBC, one cannot read from an encrypted Excel file, even if you have the password. It doesn't make any sense. Is there a way around this??

This is the quote from MSDN:

If the Excel workbook is protected by a password, you cannot open it for data access, even by supplying the correct password with your connection string. If you try, you receive the following error message: "Could not decrypt file."