MATLAB: Converting string matrix from Excel to Matlab

cell arraysexcelstrings

I have an excel document containing a matrix of strings (that is, each cell contains a word of varying length). If possible, I want to read this into Matlab so that I have a matrix of strings just as it is in Excel. In particular, I need to be able to reference the (i,j)th matrix element, which should contain an individual word/string.

For example, if cell A2 in excel contains "dog," I would like element (1,2) in matlab to contain the string 'dog'.

It seems like there should be a quick way to do this, but I can't get anything to work. Does anyone have any ideas? Let me know, thanks!!

Best Answer

Use XLSREAD with three outputs. The final output, raw, will contain a cell array with all of your data from Excel.

[num,txt,raw] = xlsread(filename)
A2 = raw{1,2};            % Will assign the element to variable A2

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MATLAB: How to export a 2 dimensional cell array of strings with different lengths to an excel file

On MS Windows systems with Excel installed, xlswrite() is happy to take cell arrays. From the documentation:

"A: Input matrix, specified as a two-dimensional numeric or character array, or, if each cell contains a single element, a cell array.

If A is a cell array containing something other than a scalar numeric or a string, then xlswrite silently leaves the corresponding cell in the spreadsheet empty."

On MS Windows system that do not have Excel installed, and on OS-X and Linux systems, you are restricted to 'basic' mode, which does have a limitation of only supporting numeric data and csv output.

On those systems, if csv is acceptable, and for the case where A is a cell array containing only strings (and any empty entries are the empty string '' instead of the empty numeric []), then

fmt = [repmat('%s,', 1, size(A,2)), '%s\n'];
fid = fopen('YourOutput.csv', 'wt');
A_flip = A.';    %transpose needed
fprintf(fid, fmt, A_flip{:});
fclose(fid);

If you have a mix of strings and numeric values then more work is required to get the right output (especially if you have datenum or datetime values to be output as date strings.)

MATLAB: How to export to excel

That's normal for a Mac. Also, you'll probably see a in one cell, n in the next cell to the right, and s in the next cell to the right. If you want the string 'ans' to go in as a string into one cell, put it in braces:

xlswrite('a.xlsx', {'ans'})

If you want the number 1.662 to go in, use ans without quotes

xlswrite('a.xlsx', ans)

Best Answer

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