How can I merge two Excel (xls) files in Perl or batch?

Question

I have two files lets say a.xls and b.xls. The first one contains 2 sheets and the second one 3 of them. Can someone let me know if I can merge the

Answer 1

You can do it with Alacon - command-line utility for Alasql database.

It works with Node.js, so you need to install Node.js and then Alasql package:

To take data from Excel file you can use the following command:

> node alacon "SELECT * INTO XLSX("main.xls",{headers:true}) 
               FROM XLSX('data1.xlsx', {headers:true}) 
               UNION ALL SELECT * FROM XLSX('data2.xlsx', {headers:true})
               UNION ALL SELECT * FROM XLSX('data3.xlsx', {headers:true})
               UNION ALL SELECT * FROM XLSX('data4.xlsx', {headers:true})
               UNION ALL SELECT * FROM XLSX('data5.xlsx', {headers:true})"

This is one very long line. In this example all files have data in "Sheet1" sheets.

Answer 2

For a Perl solution use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel to read the files and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel to save your output. Both modules are well documented and come with lots of example code(e.g. WriteExcel)

Answer 3

If you are running on Windows, have Excel installed and can use Win32::OLE (e.g. the script will not be invoked by a web server etc), the following should work:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use FindBin qw($Bin);
use File::Spec::Functions qw( catfile );

use Win32::OLE qw(in);
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Excel';
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3;

my $excel = get_excel();
$excel->{Visible} = 1; # for illustration only

my @src = map $excel->Workbooks->Open($_),
          map catfile($Bin, $_),
          qw(one.xls two.xls)
          ;

my $target = $excel->Workbooks->Add(xlWBATWorksheet);
my $before = $target->Worksheets->Item(1);

for my $book ( @src ) {
    my $sheets = $book->Worksheets;
    my $it = Win32::OLE::Enum->new($sheets);

    while (defined(my $sheet = $it->Next)) {
        $sheet->Copy($before);
    }
}

$before->Delete;

$_->Close for @src;
$target->SaveAs(catfile($Bin, 'test.xls'));
$target->Close;

sub get_excel {
    my $excel = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Excel.Application');
    unless(defined $excel) {
        $excel = Win32::OLE->new('Excel.Application', sub { $_[0]->Quit })
            or die "Oops, cannot start Excel: ",
                   Win32::OLE->LastError, "\n";
    }
    return $excel;
}