Copying data from excel file

Hii friends,

I am a newbie to unix/shell scripting and got stuck in implementing a functionality.Dear experts,kindly spare some time to bring me out of dark pit ..
My requirement is somewhat wierd,let me explain what i have and what i need to do...
1) there are several excel workbooks containing multible sheets.say a workbook named test with multiple sheets namely test.1,test.2,test.3....
2) i need to write a shell script that reads the first column of a specified sheet say test.2 and copy it in the first column of a new excel workbook.
3)Then step no. 2 needs to be repeated for other workbooks from where data needs to be copied.

Write now i can just copy data from a workbook having single sheet using the command
cut -f1 -d"," < inputfile | paste -s -d","> destination file

Kindly advise

Thanks to google, I found this excellent tutorial: Cultured Perl: Reading and writing Excel files with Perl

It uses perl and a module for writing and reading Excel spreadsheets. You'll need to download the module from "CPAN.org". Good luck.