TransferSpreadsheet to .ADP dbo table

I'm getting a problem with im****ting an Excel spreadsheet into a table
in a SQL Server 2000 back-end. I'm doing this in VBA in an onClick
event proc in an Access 2003 project.

The target table's owner is 'dbo', but the database connection is via
user 'fred'. password 'bloggs' (say) using SQL Server authentication.
User 'fred' is a member of db_owner role.

What happens is that TransferSpreadsheet ignores the 'dbo' table and
creates a new version, owned by 'fred'. This has undesirable side-
effects downstream (the app crashes).

The TransferSpreadsheet (and spreadsheet file itself) seem to be fine,
as the data is im****ted OK when the existing target table is actually
owned by 'fred'.

Is there something (permission/grant?) that needs to be set to enable
'fred' to im****t into the 'dbo' table, or is there a problem with
TransferSpreadsheet?

Any help gratefully received!

Dave