I have found this module rather helpful for working with Excel. If you want to find out how to do anything, just make an excel macro and look at it -- the VB can be translated to perl VERY easily.

#here's the macro
Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("A1"), Order1:=xlAscending, Header:=xlGuess
+, _
        OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom
    Selection.Sort Key1:=Range("A1"), Order1:=xlDescending, Header:=xl
+Guess, _
        OrderCustom:=1, MatchCase:=False, Orientation:=xlTopToBottom
[download]

If you know the Excel object model you can use that to help. Just take the . and make them method calls, i.e., a.b to a->b. The := assignments are mapped to hashes. So a.b c:=d to a->b( {c => d}).

There're a lot of good resources you can find for this -- I enjoyed the OLE Browser (standard with active perl, I think it's <perl-path>/html/ole-browser

UPDATE:

Here's a quick start:

my $file_name = 'FILE_NAME.xls';
my $xl        = Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application',
   sub {$_[0]->Quit;}) or die "hlpful err msg";

my $book      = $xl->Workbooks->Add();
my $sheet1    = $book->Worksheets(1);

$xl->{DisplayAlerts} = 0;

$sheet1->{Name} = 'YOUR_SHEET_NAME';

$book->SaveAs($file_name);
[download]

Additional Examples:
 
If you performed a normal installation the following
examples files should have been copied to your
~site/Spreadsheet/WriteExcel/examples directory: 

The following is a description of the example files that
are provided with Spreadsheet::WriteExcel. They are intended 
to demonstrate the different features and options of the module. 

[..SNIP..]

   Developer
   =========
comments.pl         Add cell comments to Excel 5 worksheets.
[download]

Just think of what other wonders might have been missed.

C-.

---
Flex the Geek