What Platform are you on?
If you are actually on a Win32 Platform, just use Win32::OLE;

Here's a little example that I wrote for someone else showing how to get the contents of a cell, which, in this case, constitutes a date, and an example of manipulating said date using '::Variant'.

use strict;
use Win32::OLE qw(in with);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';
use Win32::OLE::Variant;
use Win32::OLE::NLS qw(:LOCALE :DATE);

$Win32::OLE::Warn = 2; # Throw Errors, I'll catch them

my $Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Excel.Application')
        || Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit');

    my $file = 'c:\perl\projects\excel\variant.xls';
    my $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open($file);
    my $Sheet = $Book->Worksheets("Sheet1");
    

my $dt = Variant(VT_DATE, $Sheet->Range("a1")->{Value});

print "$dt\n";

print $dt->Date(DATE_LONGDATE), "\n";
$Sheet->Range("a1")->{Value} = $dt->Date(DATE_LONGDATE);

print $dt->Date("ddd',' MMM dd yy"), "\n";
$Sheet->Range("a1")->{Value} = $dt->Date("ddd',' MMM dd yy");

$Book->ActiveSheet->Save();

[download]

Of course, if you aren't on Win32, the suggestions above hold much more merit than mine.

Update: I added code for writing out to the excel file, as that was part of the question.

C-.

In reply to Re: Excel from Perl by cacharbe
in thread Excel from Perl by ws_stefan

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.