Thank you, pryrt,for all the helpful info! Your suggestion on using VBA/Excel vs developing a separate Perl application sounds like the better choice for my non-technical colleagues. I will definitely look into VBA and see whether it can help out with the more complicated tasks I need to automate. Thanks again (greatly) for your help!

(And I do realize the difference between CPAN and CSPAN but I always make the mistake since they sound so familiar to me :P, but I appreciate the clarification)