... And if you do want to use “outlook.exe” directly, I believe that you will find that Outlook has a well-featured OLE interface.   You should be able to refer to “the Outlook application,” “mailboxes,” “messages,” and pretty much every other “thing” that Outlook supports, through this mechanism.   And you should encounter no problems at all using this interface with Perl.

“I normally don’t like to think well of Microsoft Corporation,” he grumbled.   “But this, even I must admit, is A Very Good Hack.™”

Naturally, the first thing that you should do is to search http://search.cpan.org for the keyword, “Outlook.”   There we find, e.g. Mail::Outlook ...  

Before setting forth to write anything new in Perl, always make it your business to research what might have already been done, especially in a case like this, where you know you are trodding a well-worn path.   Maybe what you find on CPAN will not be exactly what you’re looking for, but it will be close.