Using Spreadsheets from MS Office alternatives

merrymonk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have Perl applications which read and write to spreadsheets. I am using MS Office 2010 to write spreadsheets which are read by the applications.

I use the following Win32 modules:

use Win32;
use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const "Microsoft Excel .* Object Library";
[download]

Office 10 support ended last month (October). I think that Office was automatically updated at the end of October. When I try and start either Excel or Word I am getting messages like "Error 1706. Setup cannot find the required files" but it they will run when I use a Cancel option a number of times. I am not confident that if I solve this particular problem I will be able to do so if more arise in the future.

Rather than buying one of the versions of Office I am looking at the free alternatives such as LibreOffice. My initial tests seem to show that this can read and write .xls and .xlsx formatted spreadsheets.

Some questions:

Q1. If I use LibraOffice can I still use the Win modules listed above? If so is this likely to remain the case for at least a few years?

Q2. Are there any particular hidden traps that I should be aware of?

Comment on Using Spreadsheets from MS Office alternatives Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Using Spreadsheets from MS Office alternatives by marto (Cardinal) on Nov 03, 2020 at 12:14 UTC
Can't you just use perl and something like Excel::Writer::XLSX (N.B. the 'reading Excel files' section of the docs)? The error listed above is usually to do with paths to installation media. Alternatively see OpenOffice::UNO or other alternative for open/libreoffice automation. Update: Fixed typo.	[reply]
Re: Using Spreadsheets from MS Office alternatives by Corion (Patriarch) on Nov 03, 2020 at 11:54 UTC
No - LibreOffice does not have the same OLE automation like MS Office has. LibreOffice can be automated using other OLE/COM automation calls, but it means you will have to rewrite all your automation macros.	[reply]


Perl Monk, Perl Meditation
	PerlMonks