If starting Excel on _another_ Win32 box is an option, you can try the following stunt.

use Win32::OLE;

my $excel = Win32::OLE->new(['172.16.12.100','Excel.Application']) 
    or die "Can't start excel: $!";

my $workbook = $excel->Workbooks->Open('c:\test.xls')
    or die "Can't open file: ",Win32::OLE->LastError();

my $sheet = $workbook->Worksheets(1)
    or die "Can't open sheet: ",Win32::OLE->LastError();

my $everything=$sheet->UsedRange()->{Value}
    or die "Can't get range: ",Win32::OLE->LastError();

for (@$everything) {
       for (@$_) {
        print defined($_) ? "$_|" : "<undef>|";
       }
       print "\n";
}
$excel->Quit;
[download]

This code will start Excel on 172.16.12.100 (a box with MS Office installed) using DCOM and open the file c:\test.xls (c:\test.xls on 172.16.12.100 !!!) and print a delimited output of the first worksheet.

Can't think of a thinner way to do it ;-)

/brother t0mas