Curious "too many fields" error

I'm doing an extract query from a table with a lot of fields (9. (Not my
database.) I'm only pulling about a dozen out. The query works unless I
try to export it to a new spreadsheet. I've done a compact and repair, to
no avail. It's Access 2003.

To get around it, I did a select into a new table and exported from there,
but I'm curious what might be going on.