XLS to SQL [help me plx]

im looking for a FREE program that will convert an excel spreadsheet to sql for easy uploading / updating.

ive tried the csv method and works fine for numbers and short text. but a lot of my cells contain commas and other weird characters.

anything free out there?
or any other method?

No need for additional software, MySQL does that, LOAD DATA INFILE. Check the docs at dev.mysql.com:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/load-data.html

If you're not using MySQL as your database, install MySQL (it takes 5 minutes if you're new, 25 seconds if you know what you're doing), use MySQL to LOAD DATA INFILE, then use the mysqldump utility to obtain an SQL dump of it.