How to copy and paste several cells from e.g. Excel into a MATLAB uitable?

We develop a graphical user interface (GUI) with the Matlab App Designer. Many users of the GUI would like to copy the data from Excel with ‘ctrl + c’ and then wants to paste it to the UITable in the app with ‘ctrl + v’. The MATLAB table model (UITable) doesn’t seem to have this feature. Is there any workaround or solution for this problem?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

It is possible to copy and paste single cells from e.g. Excel to MATLAB since MATLAB R2021b. However, it exists an enhancement request to implement a feature to copy and paste several cells to the MATLAB uitable. 

In the meantime, you could work around by taking advantage of the following MATLAB File exchange submissions "num2clip: copy numerical arrays to clipboard " and "Straightforward COPY and PASTE functions".

Answer 2

[Jason]

I got this to work:

        function TablePasteData(app,src,event,tbl)           
           %Get Data From Clipboard           
           clipb=clipboard('paste');   
           data=[]; 
           newStr = splitlines(clipb);
           [n,m]=size(newStr);
           for i=1:n-1           
               B=newStr{i};
               C=split(B);
               l=numel(C);
               data(i,1)=str2double(C{1,1});
               data(i,2)=str2double(C{2,1});
               if l==3
                   data(i,3)=str2double(C{3,1});
               end

           end
           data   
           tbl.Data=data;   
        end