Why does MATLAB 6.5.1 (R13) crash when I attempt to clear the contents of a range in an MS Excel spreadsheet via ActiveX/COM?

I am trying to use the MATLAB 6.5.1 (R13SP1) ActiveX/COM interface to control Microsoft Excel. I am trying to clear the contents of a range in the spreadsheet. I am using the following code:

A2 = cell(2,2);  

set(eActiveSheetRange, 'Value', A2);

MATLAB crashes whenever I issue that SET command.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This behavior has been corrected in MATLAB 7.0 (R14). If you are using a previous version, read the following:

This has been verified as a bug in MATLAB 6.5.1 (R13SP1) in the way that it handles writing empty cell arrays to MS Excel spreadsheets via ActiveX/COM.

As a workaround with MATLAB 6.5.1 (R14), initialize the elements of the cell array as in either of the following two commands:

A2 = {[], []; [], []}

Or

A2 = {'', ''; '', ''}