If all you are dealing with is data without formatting or commands, you might be better off using comma-separated (CSV) or delimited forms. There are the DBD::CSV and BerkeleyDB that can deal with these kinds of formats.

Hello .... If I'm using Unix platform .... What can I do ? jahernandezm

I suppose this (parsing the entire file, making changes, then writing it back) is the way to go, since modules like DBD::Excel seem to do it.

I had to face a similar problem some time ago. It was probably easier because I had to edit a set of fixed templates to generate weekly and monthly reports in Excel format for the management.

Lacking fancy formatting, CSV was not enough <SAD_BUT_TRUE>even though the information was just the same of course</SAD_BUT_TRUE>.

In the end I decided to parse the templates once, I wrote a set of long-but-easy functions, one for each template, then all I needed was just some additional code to write the actual data into the chosen template.

If your templates are not complex, you may decide to copy, not parse them, converting by hand into Perl code or whatever suits your needs.

The additional code I had for each template was a simple (yet longish) function taking a hash as a parameter with all the information I needed to "plug" in the template.

Obviously this is practical if you always have a fixed set of templates to edit, not sheets that differ every time.

-- TMTOWTDI

Here's a little example that I wrote for someone else showing how to get the contents of a cell, which, in this case, constitutes a date, and an example of manipulating said date using '::Variant'.

use strict;
use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';
use Win32::OLE::Variant;
use Win32::OLE::NLS qw(:LOCALE :DATE);

$Win32::OLE::Warn = 2; # Throw Errors, I'll catch them

my $Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Excel.Application')
        || Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit');

    my $file = 'c:\perl\projects\excel\variant.xls';
    my $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open($file);
    my $Sheet = $Book->Worksheets("Sheet1");
    

my $dt = Variant(VT_DATE, $Sheet->Range("a1")->{Value});

print "$dt\n";

print $dt->Date(DATE_LONGDATE), "\n";
$Sheet->Range("a1")->{Value} = $dt->Date(DATE_LONGDATE);

print $dt->Date("ddd',' MMM dd yy"), "\n";
$Sheet->Range("a1")->{Value} = $dt->Date("ddd',' MMM dd yy");

$Book->ActiveSheet->Save();
[download]

Of course, if you aren't on Win32, the suggestions above hold much more merit than mine.

Update: I added code for writing out to the excel file, as that was part of the question.

C-.