Perhaps you could share how you "do basic read operations on excel spreadsheets using Perl"? I use Win32::OLE as I run on a Windows box and it provides more functionality in the creation of Excel objects than the Spreadsheet::* modules.

If that's the case, you can use:

my $MinRow = $inWks->UsedRange->Find({What=>"*", SearchDirection=>xlNe
+xt, SearchOrder=>xlByRows})->{Row};
my $MaxRow = $inWks->UsedRange->Find({What=>"*", SearchDirection=>xlPr
+evious, SearchOrder=>xlByRows})->{Row};

my $MinCol = $inWks->UsedRange->Find({What=>"*", SearchDirection=>xlNe
+xt, SearchOrder=>xlByColumns})->{Column};
my $MaxCol = $inWks->UsedRange->Find({What=>"*", SearchDirection=>xlPr
+evious, SearchOrder=>xlByColumns})->{Column};
[download]

after you define an Excel OLE object, workbook and worksheet.