If all you need to do is extract raw data from an Excel sheet I find Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Simple saves typing and is far easier to read. YMMV:

my $xls = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Simple->read( 'spreadsheet.xls' );
foreach my $sheet ($xls->sheets) {
    while ($sheet->has_data) {  
        print join( ', ', $sheet->next_row ), "\n";
    }
}
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