How do I prevent XLSREAD from converting TRUE to 1 and FALSE to 0 in MATLAB R2011a?

When I attempt to read the and Excel file using xlsread(filename) I get the following output:

[M,T,R] = xlsread('Sample.xls')

M =

       0     1

T = 

      'Heading 1'    'Heading 2'    'Heading 3'

      'Data 1 '      'Data 1 '      'Data 1 '  

      'Data 2'       'Data 2'       'Data 2'   

      'Data 3'       'Data 3'       'Data 3'   

      'Data 4'       ''             ''         

      'Data 4'       'true'         'false'    

      'Data 5'       'Data 6'       'Data 7'   

      'Data 6'       'Data 7'       'Data 8'   

R = 

      'Heading 1'    'Heading 2'    'Heading 3'

      'Data 1 '      'Data 1 '      'Data 1 '  

      'Data 2'       'Data 2'       'Data 2'   

      'Data 3'       'Data 3'       'Data 3'   

      'Data 4'       [        0]    [        1]

      'Data 4'       'true'         'false'    

      'Data 5'       'Data 6'       'Data 7'   

      'Data 6'       'Data 7'       'Data 8'

MATLAB is interpreting FALSE and TRUE as Boolean variables as they are imported, but not when they are lower case.

This is true even though the cell format for the entire worksheet has been explicitly set to "Text"

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This happens due to the functionality of Excel.

1. typing in excel true converts the value to 1 (boolean true) if any numeric or general format is selected

2. typing in excel true when the format was preselected to text, keeps the string (thus importing with xlsread keeps the string)

3. having typed true with numeric or general format and then converting to text format does not affect the saved value unless you press F2 then Enter. Unfortunately this last operation is applicable to single cells.

In order to workaround this follow the steps below:

• in Excel, select the whole column with the boolean TRUE or FALSE
• under the tab panel Data > Text To Columns > Next > Next
• select Text (Column data format) > Finish
• Now use [a,b,raw] = xlsread(...)