How can I associate Excel header names as column variables when using XLSREAD?

I have an Excel file with columns of data. The top row has column names. When pulling into MATLAB using the XLSREAD function I would like to have variables created with the same name as the column headers which contain the column data.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This can be performed using a FOR loop and the EVALIN function

[mydata, myheader] = xlsread('Book1.xls');

for i = 1:length(myheader)

      % compose a command to assign each column to a variable with the same 

      % name as the header

      commandExec = [myheader{i}, ' = ', 'mydata(:,', num2str(i) , ');'];

      % execute the composed command to actually create the variable

      evalin('base', commandExec );

end

[Madhura Suresh]

@Tassie: Can you submit this to [e-mail], and you can get direct assistance for this issue?