Since you already stepped down the slippery slope of Windows automation, you might as well go the full step and automate Excel from Perl, using Win32::OLE (for Windows) or Spreadsheet::ParseExcel (for Windows or Linux/other *nixes?) and some code grabbed from here (untested code):

use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';

# die on errors...
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3;                                

# get already active Excel application or open new
my $Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Excel.Application')
    || Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit');  
# open Excel file
my $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open("c:/komodo projects/test.xls"); 

# You can dynamically obtain the number of worksheets, rows, 
# and columns through the Excel OLE interface.  Excel's 
# Visual Basic Editor has more information on the Excel OLE
# interface.  Here we just use the first worksheet, rows 1 
# through 4 and columns 1 through 3. select worksheet 
# number 1 (you can also select a worksheet by name)
my $Sheet = $Book->Worksheets(1);

foreach my $row (1..4) {
 foreach my $col (1..3) {
   # skip empty cells
   next unless defined $Sheet->Cells($row,$col)->{'Value'};

   # print out the contents of a cell  
   printf "At ($row, $col) the value is %s and the formula is %s\n",
   $Sheet->Cells($row,$col)->{'Value'},
   $Sheet->Cells($row,$col)->{'Formula'};        
 }
}

# clean up after ourselves
$Book->Close;
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Of course, you could also use Perl to manipulate that workbook :

  
  $sheet->Cells($row, $col)->{'Value'} = 1;
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perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ;    # The  
$d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider
($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new   #in the
HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' #  web
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