How do I read data from an Excel Spreadsheet using the Automation client support in MATLAB?

I would like to use the Automation client (COM/ActiveX) support in MATLAB to read data from an MS Excel Spreadsheet.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The following sample code illustrates how you can read data from an Excel File using the COM Automation support in MATLAB:

hExcel = actxserver('excel.application'); 

hExcel.Workbooks.Open('testxlsread.xls');

%BtchData is the name of the sheet:

data = hExcel.Worksheets.Item('BtchData').UsedRange.Value;  

hExcel.Quit;

delete(hExcel)

The variable "data" will now store all the data that's read from Excel as a cell array.

You can then parse through to read the numeric and text data from the cell array:

for n = 1:r

     for m = 1:c,

        if ischar(data{n,m})

           A(n,m) = NaN; 

        else A(n,m) = data{n,m};

           data{n,m} = [];

        end

     end

end