I guess, even for that, he needs to download it at least till the timeline where he left using his wallet, i.e.; last year. This is what we've been yelling over here but OP seems to have probably resolved the issue maybe that's why they are not responding. The problem maybe, he doesn't really know the exact final address where he stored his coins?
No, vkclassic is ight. You don't need to download the blockchain at all to just export your private keys.
The fastest way to recover 'coins inside a wallet.dat' is to open it, export the private keys, and import them into another wallet.
If you don't intend to use core, it would be just a waste of time and space downloading the blockchain.