Problem with strings and numerics in a matrix read from excel file

I have an excel where there is information of alphabets and numbers. I read the excel in matlab in raw format

Now, I have a column in a big matrix as

 [1]
 '1A'
 [2]
 [3]
 [4]
 [505]
 [601]
 [7]
 [8]
this is how the xlsread command gave it to me. I want to convert all these into strings like  ['1' , '1A', '2' and so on..] .
I am struggling to do it. I want no blank spaces in each element. I mean it should not be like [ '     1', '   1A', '      2'  and so on]....

Thank you very much in advance.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Assuming your column is a cell, this works:

C = {[1];
   '1A'
   [2]
   [3]
   [4]
   [505]
   [601]
   [7]
   [8]};

A = cellfun(@num2str, C, 'Uni',0);

yielding:

A = 

      '1'
      '1A'
      '2'
      '3'
      '4'
      '505'
      '601'
      '7'
      '8'

I thought it would have a problem with '1A', but it sailed right through.