Can't import cell (field) values greater than 255 characters in length

When importing fields of more than 255 characters, the data stored in Drupal is truncated to 255 characters.

There are a number of examples of this problem documented (and fixed) in other php libraries, outlined here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7841739/how-can-i-import-cells-greate...

However, this module requires a special version of the phpExcelReader module for which I cannot find a patch.

Is there a way to fix this in the module? Is there a way to use a different Excel Reader module?

Any assistance or workarounds would be welcome. I looked at using http://drupal.org/project/feeds_xls which leverages a different, patchable import library, but it doesn't appear to allow importing data from arbitrarily-named columns into arbitrary fields (such as those created using the FIelds API) - It only supports Title, Body, Author, etc.

Importing fields > 255 chars is a common need for data migration - This needs a solution for D7!