use strict;
use warnings;
use Win32::OLE;

my $oa;
eval {$oa = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Outlook.Application')};
die "Outlook not installed" if $@;
unless (defined $oa) {
  print "Outlook is not running.  Attempting to start it.\n";
  $oa = Win32::OLE->new('Outlook.Application', sub {$_[0]->Quit;})
    or die "Oops, cannot start Outlook";
}
# do something with $oa here