You don't need to import data into global server at all if you have an excel file. GS reads excel/ascii format. No problem! Just read the manual on how to. Most new people are just too lazy to learn the program and only know how to complain.
Theoretically you are right. Nevertheless things should normally go well, but as it is Microsoft, many dates were messed up and couldn't be read by TS. So i had to manually adapt dozens of dates. The US uses month day year; Europe uses day month year. And on top of that the formats in the excel were sometimes 30/05/06 and sometimes 30may06. Changing the format from the second to the first didn't work. That's why the file couldn't be read directly. I don't see why to read the manual, sometimes it is easier to ask. I have realtime feed and never use the import functions.