I used Spreaadsheet::Read (with Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX): 
use Data::Dumper;
use Spreadsheet::Read;

my $book = ReadData ("foo.xlsx");
print Dumper [ Spreadsheet::Read::rows($book->[1]) ];

[download]
I used "Merge and Center" so that my 2 left most columns (cat and dog) each had 3 cells to the right and the output was: 
$VAR1 = [
          [
            'cat',
            'foo'
          ],
          [
            '',
            'bar'
          ],
          [
            '',
            'baz'
          ],
          [
            'dog',
            'one'
          ],
          [
            '',
            'two'
          ],
          [
            '',
            'tree'
          ]
        ];

[download]
This seems more ideal, but you'll still need to determine where the cut off is. You might be a victim of "garbage in/garbage out" as well. :(

In reply to Re: rowspan vals in Excel SS are not interpreted by ParseExcel::Simple by Anonymous Monk
in thread rowspan vals in Excel SS are not interpreted by ParseExcel::Simple by misterperl

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