@GQRanalytics I tried a few things and indeed the node takes quite some time to load. My impression is this is due to
- empty formats running down the sheets
- cells are protected
- simultaneous access to the same file
My guess is that the current version of Excel Reader has a problem with protected cells and their content. Not sure why that is.
What you could do is try and use R/RStudio or Python to import the data (not very elegant I know). I think Pandas has a generic Excel reader and the latest KNIME version can have Python (with Pandas) bundled - so this might be an interim solution without having to install additional software.