How can I read an Excel spreadsheet from COBOL?

You can use the attached code as a framework to read your Excel spreadsheet.
The sample reads an Excel spreadsheet and display the contents using the Apache POI, installed with your isCOBOL runtime.
Compile and run it, passing the name of your spreadsheet as a parameter.

For instance:

   iscc readxls.cbl
   iscrun READXLS readxls.xls

Another good sample to refer to is in the samples folder of your isCOBOL installation, under "/is-java/iscobol-uses-java-object/others/excel".
NOTE: isCOBOL contains the basic Apache POI libraries. If you need full support, you can download more libraries here: http://poi.apache.org/download.html