Read Excel file with Matlab

Hello, I have an Excel file with numbers and strings. If I use the function xlsread it gives me back only the numbers. How can I read the strings?

Answer 1

[Michelle Hirsch]

If the data in your spreadsheet is largely tabular, you'll likely be happier reading it into a table. tables allow you to mix numeric and text data in a way that's much easier to manage for most applications than a cell array.

t = readtable('myfile')

[Vinod Jha]

Hi Michelle,

Can you please suggest how I should access excel sheet of each cell contains a small image?

[Michelle Hirsch]

I'm not sure if I know exactly what you are trying to do. My impression is that Excel doesn't actually have a concept of images in cells - images are just placed on the canvas and positioned to look like they live in cells.

Here are a couple of thoughts if you are trying to read the image data into MATLAB:

• Take advantage of the fact that Excel files are actually ZIP files. Unzip and import the images.

For instance, I made a file with two pictures. You'll see them in the xl/media file:

>> contents = string(unzip('twopictures.xlsx'))'

contents =

14×1 string array

"[Content_Types].xml"

"_rels/.rels"

"xl/_rels/workbook.xml.rels"

"xl/workbook.xml"

"xl/drawings/drawing1.xml"

"xl/media/image1.jpeg"

"xl/styles.xml"

"xl/drawings/_rels/drawing1.xml.rels"

"xl/media/image2.jpeg"

"xl/theme/theme1.xml"

"xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml"

"xl/worksheets/_rels/sheet1.xml.rels"

"docProps/core.xml"

"docProps/app.xml"

I could then use imread to read the images, e.g.

im = imread('xl/media/image1.jpeg');

The biggest issue is I don't know how to figure out where the images were located.

• If you are on Windows, the other approach would be to use ActiveX to connect to Excel to read the images. I'm on a Mac so I haven't tried this.

Answer 2

[KSSV]

[num,txt,raw] = xlsread('myfile') ;

num gives only numbers.

txt gives only text data.

raw gives the complete file.

Answer 3

[Ijaz Younis]

[num,txt,raw] = xlsread('myfile')

[Paruvachi Raja]

xlasread is not commended according MATHWORKS.