Question

Originally I tried to open a XML file with Excel. But as this takes ages I parsed the XML myself into a Tab delimited text file. I thought I found the correct syntax in the internet. I tried below code using the values I recorded with an Excel Macro. I have an 18 column Tab delimited file. The error occures in the last line of below code when calling “Worksheets” Method.

Error message:
Can’t call method “Worksheets” without a package or object reference at ./PostProcessingDev.pl line 70.

use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';
Win32::OLE->Option(Warn => 3);

use strict;

my $Excel;
my $Sheet;
my $Workbook;


$Excel = CreateObject OLE "Excel.Application";

$Workbook =  $Excel->Workbooks->OpenText({Filename =>"$inSelf->{'TXT'}",
  Origin => xlMSDOS,
  StartRow => 1,
  DataType => xlDelimited, 
  TextQualifier => xlDoubleQuote, 
  ConsecutiveDelimiter => "False", 
  Tab => "True",
  Semicolon => "False",
  Comma => "False",
  Space => "False",
  Other => "False",
  FieldInfo => [[1, xlTextFormat],
    [2, xlTextFormat],
    [3, xlTextFormat],
    [4, xlTextFormat],
    [5, xlTextFormat],
    [6, xlTextFormat],
    [7, xlTextFormat],
    [8, xlTextFormat],
    [9, xlTextFormat],
    [10, xlTextFormat],
    [11, xlTextFormat],
    [12, xlTextFormat],
    [13, xlTextFormat],
    [14, xlTextFormat],
    [15, xlTextFormat],
    [16, xlTextFormat],
    [17, xlTextFormat],
    [18, xlTextFormat]],
  TrailingMinusNumbers => "True"});

$Sheet = $Workbook->Worksheets(1);

Answer 1

Do you really have to parse TSV using Excel? If there is nothing fancy in your files, you might well use something like this:

my $file = 'some tsv file';
{
    open my $in,"<",$file  or die "$file: $!";
    while(<$in>) {
        chomp;
        my @cols = split /\t/;
        # do something with columns in @cols array
    }
}

If Excel is needed for a reason I cannot see, the problem is that OpenText method returns True/False and not Workbook object. This works:

use strict;

use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';
use Data::Dump;     # for dd

Win32::OLE->Option(Warn => 3);

my $Excel = Win32::OLE->new("Excel.Application");
$Excel->Workbooks->OpenText({
    Filename             => 'enter the full path to file',
    Origin               => xlMSDOS,
    StartRow             => 1,
    DataType             => xlDelimited,
    TextQualifier        => xlDoubleQuote,
    Tab                  => "True",
    TrailingMinusNumbers => "True"
});

my $Sheet = $Excel->ActiveWorkbook->Worksheets(1);
my $Data = $Sheet->UsedRange()->{Value};

dd $Data;    # arrayref (rows) of arrayrefs (columns)