Oh dear, I know this is the silliest question, even more basic than yesterday's, but I'm finding that getting started on CPAN assumes a degree of intelligence and general computer competence which is sadly beyond me. Help me out this time and I promise I'll stop pestering you about it...

Basically, what happens when i install something using the CPAN module? It runs nmake but what does that do? The files unzip to C:/.cpan/build/Spreadsheet-ParseExcel-0.2602, for example (incidentally, as you can see I'm a Windows user). When I want to use the module however, 

use strict;
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;

[download]
can't find it. So I could do 
use strict;
use lib "C:/.cpan/build";
use Spreadsheet-ParseExcel-0.2602::ParseExcel;

[download]
but that can't be right surely. So I could set up a new folder in C:/perl/lib/ called Spreadsheet, and copy everything in there? Is that what people do? With every single module they download?

If anyone could, in the simplest possible terms, talk me through installing, and then useing a module, using the CPAN command line (I know there's PPM, but I've started with this one, so I'd like to see it through) I'd be so grateful. If you could tell me what the stages make, test, install actually do, that'd be interesting too.

Cheers
Dennis

In reply to More CPAN woe by Basilides

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