I believe that creating ranges can be expensive so it would probably be better to create one range and then iterate through the cell looking for a match.*

Alternatively, you could try using the Excel worksheet CountIf() function. Here is a small working example:

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    use strict;
    use warnings;

    use Win32::OLE;
    use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';

    my $application = Win32::OLE->new("Excel.Application");
    my $workbook    = $application->Workbooks->Open("c:/temp/test.xls"
+);
    my $worksheet   = $workbook->Worksheets(1);
    my $range       = $worksheet->Range("A1:A8");

    my $count = $application->WorksheetFunction->CountIf( $range, "2" 
+);

    print $count, "\n";

    __END__
[download]

As a further alternative you could try using Jon Allen's XLSperl which gives you a commandline application that behaves like perl but works on Excel files. Something like this:

   XLSperl -lne 'print if /pattern/ and $COL eq "A"' file.xls
[download]

XLSperl used Spreadsheet::ParseExcel which may also be an alternative solution.

* This isn't a general rule. It is usually better if you can call a single method on a Range rather than iterate through the Cells. However, I don't think there is an applicable method that will produce the desired results in this case.

--
John.