Speed Up OpenXML retrieving values

I am using the example from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332058(v=office.12).aspx to retrieve values from an excel file. I am retrieving about 1500 values, and it is very slow.

My question does anyone know a better way to retrieve values quickly out of an excel file?

One thing that did save about 6 seconds was not opening the file every time a v开发者_开发百科alue was needed but just keep the file open throughout the process. But even doing this it is still taking about 22 seconds for it to complete.

We used http://code.google.com/p/pugixml/ to read in the XML and access the data. Very fast!