Thanks for the detailed response. To answer your first question, my understanding is that the  qw (in with) is necessary to allow use of the in and with methods without qualifying them with the full modules name as I'm guessing that Win32::Ole doesn't export these methods automatically? I am using the with to set zoom and other page setup properties

As to your other comments they are much appreciated, however many of those lines were lifted right out of the Win32::Ole tutorial. Points taken...

My intention is to have drop down lists in a worksheet which are populated with data from another workbook. Maybe the only answer is to import all of the data from the other workbook into worksheets which I can set to hidden and then use advanced filters as you suggest with references to ranges within the hidden worksheets? I have been trying to use named ranges as you suggest such as $sheet->Names->Add({Name => 'IO', RefersTo => $sheet->Range("A1:A13")});

However I cannot figure out how to actually use the named range to assign data. Everytime I do something like 
$sheet->Range->Name->{'IO'} = \@data;

[download]
I get strange errors...

In reply to Re^2: Win32::Ole excel external data range by anti-monk
in thread Win32::Ole excel external data range by anti-monk

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