There still is no Perl module written to read the various MS Word formats on CPAN, but OLE::Storage has an example script that extracts text from MS Word 6/7/8 files, so OLE::Storage should be able to read MS Word files, but maybe not on that high level that OpenOffice::OODoc offers. The newer OLE::Storage_Lite should also be able to read MS Word files. There is also a module that can WRITE MS Word files (Win32::Word::Writer), but it depends on OLE and an installed MS Word. Newer MS Office versions (starting at Office 2003) write ZIP-compressed XML files for at least Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. You just have to unzip the *.docx file and parse the XML file it contains, very similar to what OpenOffice::OODoc does. See also Re: Excel 2007 Support.

Alexander