I use the technique outlined in Re: Convert word(.doc) file to html file. Possible alternatives are outlined in Re: export excelsheet as .csv and it seems that Re^3: Problems with Microsft's new Office 'XML' is just Re: Convert word(.doc) file to html file with s/Microsoft Word/Excel/g ;-)

Are the files big? If not, say each file <50M, I would read all the excel files using Spreadsheet::ParseExcel and create some dbm-like database (perl hash on disk) with some extra fields to later ease up your task of summarizing the data.

For this simple "database" the modules AnyDBM_File, MLDBM or DBM::Deep come to mind or even simple serializing to a file using YAML o Data::Dumper-like modules.

Maybe you can use a common origin in days to facilitate the drawing of a chart or table so that a pre-calculated record could be: issue, date0, date1, date1 - date0 (in days), day0, day1 (day0 and day1 taken with respect to an arbitrary origin -- easy to do with Date::Manip or Date::Calc). For the drawing I would use one of the Chart::* modules or gnuplot.

Spreadsheet::ParseExcel will help you to do what you want, but it can be difficult to use. A relatively new module that I haven't used, Spreadsheet::BasicRead, provides the main ParseExcel functionality with what may be a more intuitive interface.

Also see Index of Spreadsheet FAQs, which helped me when I had a similar problem.

    use strict;
    use Win32::OLE;
    # write a value in the first empty ro of the first column
    # an excel workbook containing a sheet called Versions 
    my $projsheet = 'c:\temp\t.xls'; 
    my $val = 123; 
    my $ex = new Win32::OLE 'Excel.Application' or die;
    eval ("\$ex->Workbooks->Open(\'$projsheet\')") or die;
    
    #
    # find empty row
    #
    my $rowcounter        = 1;
    my $rowval        = 1;
    while (($rowval) && ($rowcounter < 1000)) {
        $rowval    = eval "\$ex->Workbooks(1)->Worksheets(\'Versions\'
+)->Cells($rowcounter,1)->{Value}" ;
        $rowcounter++;        
    }
    $rowcounter--;        
    #
    # fill in the values in the sheet
    #
    
    eval "\$ex->Workbooks(1)->Worksheets(\'Versions\')->Cells($rowcoun
+ter,1)->{Value}= \'$val\'" ;
    
    #
    # save and quit
    #
    $ex->Save;
    $ex->Quit;
    
    return 1;
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Why are you using the eval statements, and why are you using the string form of the eval statements when calling Excel methods? In my experience, the direct way works just as well and looks far less ugly:

...
$rowval = $ex->Workbooks(1)->Worksheets('Versions')->Cells($rowcounter
+,1)->{Value}
...
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I used the eval method to be sure that $rowcounter was evaluated before the operation on the object was executed.
As to the string form of the eval , it is the only one known to me, are there any others?
Tabari