Further experimentation indicates that Win32::OLE works differently and does not set $@, nor does the eval make any difference. But error messages can be obtained by using 
$errmsg = Win32::OLE->LastError;

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This can be searched for the needed string and then ignored. The message still comes out on the screen for the Perl script window but I found that can be turned off by setting the Warn level to 1 instead of 2. So a code snippet that seems to do the job is: 
$warnlevel = $Win32::OLE::Warn;
$Win32::OLE::Warn=1;
$done = 0;
while ($done == 0) {
    if ($excel->ActiveWorkbook) {
        sleep 15;
    } else {
        $errmsg = Win32::OLE->LastError;
        if ($errmsg =~ m/busy/) {
            sleep 15;
        } else {
            $done = 1;
        }
    }
}
$Win32::OLE::Warn=$warnlevel;

[download]

In reply to Re^2: Checking when Excel editing is done by esr
in thread Checking when Excel editing is done by esr

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