Is the excel file in the current working directory (the location where you are running the perl script). If not you might want to move the script to where the excel file exists or change the $xlfile value to include the whole
path. This would be my first assumption.
Yes, I check the file out using both a full path and local path. I also have 3 other programs that exhibit the same problem that have worked in the past.
Any other ideas on diagnosing or solving?