win32com and Excel

[Matthew Miller]

hi everyone,

A couple o0f questions:-
1)
can you access an excel (.xls) file via com without having excel loaded
on that machine?
2)
once you've done:-
 blah = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
can anyone give details of
	a) howto open a particular s/s in the current directory
and
	b) howto access particular cells in that particular s/s
and
	c) howto close that s/s

I have to admit that I'm hoping some kind soul will help before I'm
consigned to grappling with what looks like grooling documentation!
thanks alot matthew.