Save Clean CSV file from Excel using Applescript

I have a process that requires downloading an Excel Spreadsheet from the Web, opening it using Excel Mac 2008, saving it as a csv file, and then parsing it using php. The manual process works fine and saves a clean CSV file. I am trying to automate this part using Applescript, and it sort of works, however, the CSV file generated contains a bunch of weird characters.

Here is the Applescript I am working 开发者_运维知识库on:

tell application id "com.microsoft.Excel" to open "~/Documents/input.xls"
tell application id "com.microsoft.Excel" to tell active sheet to save in ("output.csv") as "CSV file format"

I have tried various CSV options (Mac, Windows, MSDos) and they do not produce substantially different results.

Try this...

set theDoc to (path to desktop as text) & "test.xlsx"
set outPath to (path to desktop as text) & "test.csv"

tell application "Microsoft Excel"
    open file theDoc
    tell workbook 1
        tell sheet 1
            save in outPath as CSV file format
        end tell
        close without saving
    end tell
end tell