If you don't want to use Win32::OLE, I would look at OpenOffice / LibreOffice for converting the doc file to something else. Searching for MSWord also shows some modules, but there is nothing like Spreadsheet::ParseExcel for Word.

Simply scanning the file for strings will likely not work well if the strings are stored as UTF-16 or wide characters.

Hi Corion, thanks for the tip
I will try some of the modules you suggested, maybe I will get lucky :)
Open Office is also a good solution, but I need to see if there is a batch option for conversion before I go there

You don't really need a "batch option" with OO/LO; just write your script, allowing it to accept (@ARGV or a list in a file) multiple docs which names/fullpaths it then feeds to OO.

UPDATE: PS. You can write offsite links here as "[http://www.foo/bar.htm]" and, for PM nodes, as "[id://977242]." In the latter case, that's especially preferred, so you don't inadvertently logout a reader following your node on say, PM.org by a link to PM.com.

See also Markup in the Monastery for less expensive (keystroke-wise) ways a marking paras. </update>

I did some work on Text::Extract::Word last September. See: Re: Problem in Text::Extract::Word.

#single file
#!/usr/bin/perl -l

use strict qw/refs/;
use warnings FATAL => 'all';
use Text::Extract::Word;

binmode STDOUT, ':encoding(UTF-8)';

my $file = '/root/Desktop/xls/test1.doc';
my $extractor = Text::Extract::Word->new($file);
my $string = $extractor->get_text;
print "$string";

close STDOUT;
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#!/usr/bin/perl 

BEGIN {
    $| = 1;
}

use autodie;
use strict qw/refs/;
use Text::Extract::Word;
use warnings FATAL => 'all';

binmode STDOUT, ':encoding(UTF-8)';

my(@data) = qw(
    test1.doc
    test2.doc
    test3.doc
    test4.doc
    test5.doc
    test6.doc
);

foreach my $data(@data) {
    my $file = Text::Extract::Word->new($data);
    my $str  = $file->get_text;
    print "$str===>File done<===\n\n";
    sleep 2;
}

close STDOUT;
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Hi, thanks for the scripts
Problem is that when I run them I get:

Can't locate object method "new" via package "Text::Extract::Word" at 
+monks.pl line 11.
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I guess that there was something wrong with the installation or that the module isn't stable- I will try to fix it. The legacy interface works but not very well (some docs just aren't parsed)

# legacy interface
use Text::Extract::Word qw(get_all_text);
my $text = get_all_text("test1.doc");
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OK, so it seems I am working with the legacy code for some reason. I am now installing the new version...hope it works better