Question

The spreadsheet is Excel 97-2003 compatible and permissions 777

use strict;
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";   
my $parser   = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel->new();
print "<br>gets here:".__LINE__; 
my $workbook = $parser->parse('test.xls');
print "<br>never gets here:".__LINE__; 

Answer 1

Do you use latest Spreadsheet::ParseExcel? Current version is 0.57.

I see that you run this as CGI. Can you run it from command line (locally, with same test file) and check if there is any error message?

Try also using eval (running from command line is still better) and check if $parser is defined:

print '$parser is undef<br>' unless defined $parser;
eval {
  my $workbook = $parser->parse('test.xls');
};
print "Error message from eval: $@<br>";

Try another Excel file.

If error still is unknown and with specific Excel file, report bug in bug tracker.