Corrupted Excel 2003 Connection to a SharePoint list

I thought I would share my solution to the following issue:

You exported a SharePoint (WSS 3 or MOSS) list to Excel 2003 and sent it to your users or posted it to a document library for them, promising that they can refresh the list anytime. Very soon you get responses that they get an error message. Excel can't connect to SharePoint.

I can't pinpoint the reason for this issues which as if occurs randomly but I provide my users a work around which I either do myself and send another doc or teach them the following procedure:

• Navigate to the site.
• Open any list, (a small one can save time).
• Export it to the same Excel document into a new tab.
• Try refreshing the original list - it should work right.
• Delete the newly created tab.

That's it. This sequence fixed the connection every time I followed it.