IDK why that module won't work with XLSX, but the solution is to just use Win32::OLE directly. It's not that hard. This cheatsheet is another resource I've found useful. Here is some code to open a workbook and print out the content of the first five columns as a tab separated list.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';
use Win32::OLE::Variant;
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3;                                # die on errors.
+..
my $Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Excel.Application') || Win32:
+:OLE->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit');  # get already active Excel o
+r create new one as appropriate
$Excel->{'Visible'} = 1; # see what's going on if you want
my $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open('C:\somefile.xlsx'); # open Excel f
+ile -- requires explicit DOS path
my $Sheet = $Book->Worksheets('Sheet1'); # tab name or sheet number (f
+rom 1)
my $lastrow = $Sheet->UsedRange->Find({What=>"*",SearchDirection=>xlPr
+evious,SearchOrder=>xlByRows})->{Row};
for my $row (1..$lastrow) {  
    foreach my $col (qw(A B C D E)) {
        print $Sheet->Range("$col$row")->{'Value'},"\t"; # range is co
+lumn letter, row number; can also be the target of an assignment
    }
    print "\n";
}
$Book->close;
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