I just did a search and other than DBD::Excel (which you mentioned), I only found Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Simple which is very high level indeed and hasn't been updated since Dec 2002 so I don't know if it still works. Are there other modules you commonly use? If so, I'd love to know since I hate dealing with Excel at such a low level.
I try to do most of my Excel-parsing through DBI or not at all. For one-off jobs I sometimes just dump the spreadsheet to a CSV-file and work with that.
I find spreadsheets too much "free format" and contain too much "eye candy" for PHB's to work with. Most of the time I go the other way around: from a database to a spreadsheet (to give to my database-challenged colleagues).
That being said, I should just give Spreadsheet:ParseExcel::Simple or its underlying Spreadsheet:ParseExcel a whirl. Maybe these modules are fully developped and did not need updating since 2002! (yeah yeah and maybe the moon is made out of green cheese)
CountZero
"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law