I'd recommend you check out woolfy's Where and how to start learning Perl as there are some strange assumptions here, but a possible rewrite:

use strict;
use warnings; #good!
use Win32::OLE;
use Date::Calc; why load when you don't use it, or Win32::OLE? 

#having a few variable with a large lexical scope isn't  
#nessarily bad but in general use the smallest scope

# This acutally assigns the file location to a scalar
# doesn't get anything (as [holli] stated)
my %header_data;
my $f_mfg_desk = '//163.../chicago_wip_query.txt';

# Since you don't actually use @headers: I dropped it
# If you needed it just say why and I'll go from there

# "time" gives seconds after epoch which is proably not what you want,
+ see localtime*
my ($sec, $min, $hour, $dayofmonth, $month, $year, $weekday, $day) = l
+ocaltime(time);
$month++;
$year += 1900;

open (INFILE, $f_mfg_desk);
#if you do my $record = <INFILE> you'd need chomp($record);... or
while (<INFILE>)
{
  chomp;
  my @newrow = split /\t/;
  #missing the ]; here
  $header_data{$newrow[2]} = [ $newrow[3..18] ];
}
close(INFILE);

#to sort and reprint (proably want to copy a backup too)
open (OUTFILE, ">$f_mfg_desk");

# see perldsc* and sort*
for my $key (sort keys %header_data)
{
  #see perlref* for @{}
  for my $a (@{$header_data{$key}})
  {
    print OUTFILE "$a\t";
  }
  print OUTFILE "\n";
}

[download]

*:localtime, perldsc, sort, perlref

"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." Ambrose Bierce

In reply to Re^3: "Global Symbol Requires Explicit Package Name" error by kutsu
in thread "Global Symbol Requires Explicit Package Name" error by Portree

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.