Simple Excel Parse script.

parseexcel.rb

# Load in required libraries
require 'rubygems'
require 'parseexcel'

# Load workbook into memory
workbook = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel.parse("file.xls")

# Open first worksheet
worksheet = workbook.worksheet(0)

# Creates array to hold a Hash of parsed participants
records = Array.new

# Runs through each row of the first worksheet
worksheet.each do |entry|
  unless entry.nil?
    records << {
      :row1 => entry[0],
      :row2 => entry[1],
      :row3 => entry[2]
    }
  end  
end

# Encodes all data from crypted .xls format to latin1
records.each do |record|
  record.each do |key, value|
    record[key] = record[key].to_s('latin1') unless record[key].nil?
  end
end

# "records" contains all the data from the XLS file
puts records.first[:row1] # => etc