I am a behind a corporate firewall that doesn't allow communication on
port 119 either.

I created excelforums.com to synch up with the newsgroups every 60
seconds. Unfortunately, the difference between a discussion board
like PHPBB and the newgroups is that newsgroups are based on threads,
whereas discussion boards are more like topics and replies.

However with some tweaking, like not allowing a subject to be modified
on a reply, the synch procedure does a pretty good job matching
replies to topics.

So... if you need access to the MS Excel newsgroups, check out
www.excelforums.com

Cheers
Balazs
---------
Message sent via www.excelforums.com