If you're one of the ones using PHP on a Windows platform, and you haven't gotten a chance to mess with the COM interface for PHP, then you're missing out. Using this powerful extension, you can do fun things like interface with Excel spreadsheets (as this PHPBuilder article shows).

In Interfacing with COM objects under Windows NT/2k/XP, they give you the steps and the code you'll need to get PHP talking to external applications, in this case, Excel. You'll need to update some Windows settings, and I think you need the Admin password to do it, but once that's out of the way, the rest is smooth sailing.

The code that they give requires that you already have the COM extension installed (they don't show you how), and is not for beginners out there. It's a bit more detailed than it probably should have been, and has no description of what the sections of code do.