G'day viffer,

Some additional information would be helpful.

What is the format of your spreadsheet:

• .xls: Use of Spreadsheet::ParseExcel suggests this; however, your code doesn't look like the documented code for that module. For example, you have $cell->{Val} but the documented equivalent would appear to be $cell->value().
• .xlsx: If so, Spreadsheet::XLSX would be a better choice of module. Curiously, your code does look like the documented code for this module, e.g. the documentation shows $cell->{Val} which mirrors your posted code.
• .csv: Seems unlikely but $spreadsheet_csv in your code looks dubious.

It's somewhat unclear exactly what conversion is taking place. Is your '• content' being converted to '" content', '"content"', or something else. A link to a minimal sample of your input file, as well as showing us (a representative part of) the contents of @arr, would be useful.

The documentation for Spreadsheet::ParseExcel would suggest that $cell->unformatted() might be appropriate; however, the source code for that method shows:

sub unformatted {
    my $self = shift;

    return $self->{Val};
}
[download]

It's entirely possible that by ignoring the published interface, and circumventing the OO encapsulation, that you've caused some problem(s) which may be hard to track down.

Anyway, once you've supplied the information requested above, we may have a better idea.