Howdy - I have strange Perl problem. I get zipped XLS file generated from a database. I wrote some Win32::OLE code to unzip file and extract data however I keep running into same issue.
If file was just extracted and never manually opened and OLE tries to get hold of Excel Workbook object the procedure fails.
If file was manually opened and then saved then OLE works as expected.
I use fairly standard way of extracting data:

    unless (defined $excel)
    {
        eval 
        {
            $excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Excel.Application')
        };
        die "Excel not installed" if $@;
    }
    
    unless (defined $excel) 
    {
        $excel = Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit')
                or die "Oops, cannot start Excel";
    }
    #to avoid excessive dialogs when saving in non-Excel format
    $excel->{DisplayAlerts} = 0;

        #$excel->Workbooks->Open({ FileName => $fullname_input_file })
    #|| print STDERR "didnt open the file $!\n";

    # get a new workbook
    my $wbook;     
    if($wbook = Win32::OLE->GetObject($fullname_input_file)){;}
    else 
    {
        $wbook = $excel->{Workbooks}->{"$fullname_input_file"};
        if($wbook->Activate()){;}
        else
        {
            print STDERR "Could not open the file $fullname_input_file
+: $!\n";
            exit;
        }
    }
[download]

But if file was not opened manually I get:

Win32::OLE(0.1709) error 0x800401e6: "Bad extension for file" at oleli
+b.pl line 1286.
        eval {...} called at olelib.pl line 1286
        main::save_excel_file_as_tab_delimited_MS_API_WSC('test2.xls',
+ '__read_in_excel_file_into_array.txt', 'ANNOUNCEMENT') called at ole
+lib.pl line 411
        main::save_excel_file_as_tab_delimited('test2.xls', '__read_in
+_excel_file_into_array.txt', 'ANNOUNCEMENT') called at olelib.pl line
+ 1970
        main::read_in_excel_file_into_array_WSC('test2.xls', 'ARRAY(0x
+2b4a334)', 'ANNOUNCEMENT') called at olelib.pl line 1798
        main::read_in_excel_file_into_array('test2.xls', 'ARRAY(0x2b4a
+334)', 'ANNOUNCEMENT') called at test_unzip_in_place.pl line 107
Win32::OLE(0.1709) error 0x80020009: "Exception occurred"
    in METHOD/PROPERTYGET
"c:\ecdev\src\src_dev\model\sq\scripts\test\test_unzip\test2.xls" at o
+lelib.pl line 1297.
Can't call method "Activate" on an undefined value at olelib.pl line 1
+298.
[download]

So basic problem is that I cannot seem to get hold of $wbook object. If I just open the file and do Ctrl-S to save it and then run the script then everything runs as expected.

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