sashac88 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Good day, monks!
Below is a part of my code.
use Win32::OLE;  
$Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject ('Excel.Application')|| Win32::OL
+E->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit');                              
$Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open($restrictfile) ;      
 my $Sheet = $Book->Worksheets(1);

[download]

The problem is that when I use computers with office 2000 to execute the code I get this error message.
"Tk::Error: Can't call method "Worksheets" on an undefined value".
On computers with office 2003 everything works fine.I tried on few computers with different office version (2000/2003). Does anyone know how to overcome this issue? Thanks in advance.

20040709 Edit by ysth: Changed title from 'working with WIN32::OLE'

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Problems with Win32::OLE and different Office versions
by JamesNC (Chaplain) on Jul 07, 2004 at 11:16 UTC
    The problem is with the path used $restrictfile. I get your error if my path is wrong, make sure you use the full absolute path.(eg 'c:\\myfiles\\test.xls') Excel defaults to My Documents when it calls Open() vs the local directory your are executing your script from.

    JamesNC
[reply]

      I've also found that even though Perl can handle forward slashes as path delimiters, Excel can't. For example:

      # ... other code before this ...
if (-e "c:/myfiles/test.xls")
{
  # We get here just fine, but...
  $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open("c:/myfiles/test.xls")
    or die "Hork!\n";
  # Dies
}

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Problems with Win32::OLE and different Office versions
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Jul 07, 2004 at 08:26 UTC 
    $Excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject ('Excel.Application')|| Win32::OL
+E->new('Excel.Application', 'Quit')
|| die "EEEEEEEEEEEEEK: Can't create Excel.Application : Do you have M
+icrosoft Excel installed? : $! : $^E";

    [download]

    MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
    I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
    ** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Thanks PodMaster-it doesn't help.The application doesn't die here.
      If I append "die" to the next line of code:
      $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open($restrictfile)|| die "EEEEEEEEEEEEEK: 
+Can't create Excel.Application : Do you have M
+icrosoft Excel installed? : $! : $^E";
 ;

      [download]
      it dies only on computer with office 2000 and says "No such file or directory" , although if office 2003 installed -everything works fine.
[reply]
[d/l]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom