READ from SPREADSHEET FILE won't do it, because it has hardwired the TYPE input of SPREADSHEET STRING to a 2-D array of DBL.
Just changing the format string won't do it.
However, if you change the TYPE to a 2-D array of STR, and use %s as the format string, then it works - I've used that before.
Maybe you can make a copy of READ from SPREADSHEET FILE, and change your copy to suit your needs.
