You don't tell us what you're really trying to do. It appears that you are trying, in this code, to read every file in a directory that has a certain extension (I use 2002 so I have a different extension in a variable) and print its name. I have based the following code, which works for me, on Re^5: Win32::OLE Excel search and replace commas.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Cwd;
use Win32::OLE;

my $ext = ".xls";

my $Excel=Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application');
$Excel->{Visible}=1;
$Excel->{DisplayAlerts}=1;    #Set to 0 when the code is working, but 
+keep at 1 while debugging.

my $dir = getcwd;
$dir =~ s/\//\\\\/g;        #Sort out the slashes and backslashes
opendir(DIR, $dir) or die "can't opendir $dir: $!"; #Cookbook recipe 9
+.5
while (defined(my $file = readdir(DIR))) {
     if ((!-d $file) and (substr($file, -length($ext)) eq $ext)) {    
+#Someone WILL call a directory something.xls. I have the scars.
        my $Book = $Excel->Workbooks->Open("$dir\\\\$file") or die "Ca
+n't open file $dir\\\\$file"; 
        print $Book->FullName . "\n";
        $Book->Close;
    }
}
closedir(DIR);
$Excel->Quit;
[download]

The output in my command window is:

Z:\Data\Perl>922394.pl
Z:\Data\Perl\WhichMonk.xls
Z:\Data\Perl>cd\excel\sudonkey

Z:\Excel\Sudonkey>\data\perl\922394.pl
Z:\Excel\Sudonkey\SuDonkey2.xls
Z:\Excel\Sudonkey\SuDonkey.xls
Z:\Excel\Sudonkey\SuDonkey1_0_3.xls
Z:\Excel\Sudonkey\InPlay.xls

Z:\Excel\Sudonkey>
[download]

I am left with no orphan instance of Excel. It works on any directory. Please try this. If it leaves an orphan instance, then it's down to a 2007 parameter and without a copy, I can't help you further.

Regards,

John Davies