By changing parameters the row height does change in Excel. So it must refer to the information in the font file.
Could you please elaborate further on “The problem seems to be that Excel does not use them correctly, if at all.”.
The “if at all” part is incorrect I think.
What is the basis for this if you don’t mind responding.
I have asked Microsoft, but haven’t had a response yet.
I suspect it is not solvable in the font, but I would first experiment by settings the 3 ascender values way higher, like all 4000, and the descender values to -3000.