MATLAB: Create and fill in a table in Microsoft Word with Actx Server from MATLAB

activexactxMATLABreportword

Hello,
I want to create a table and fill it with variables in Microsoft Word with the Actx Server from MATLAB. I searched a lot but couldn't find a solution.
I also tried some available functions (toTable.m, table2word.m,..) but they didn't work at all.
It would be great if somebody could show me how to create the following table:
The table should have 7 rows and 2 coloums. Another thing i'd like to know is how to merge or divide cells in this table.
I am using Word 2013 and MATLAB R2011b.
Thank you in advance!

Best Answer

Here is part of some code I wrote several years ago that adds a long table to an existing word document. The word table was filled from the content of a matlab table (filt_pres). There's a lot of stuff there that is of no interest to you but it shows how to:
  • add a table
  • merge cells
  • fill the table with text
  • change the style of the text (using styles already defined in the document)
word = actxserver('Word.Application');
word.Visible = true;
wdoc = word.Documents.Open(docname);
Selection = word.Selection;
Selection.InsertBreak(5); %5 is wdSectionBreakOddPage
Selection.MoveLeft(1, 1);  %1 is wdCharacter
%Create table and format properly. The format of the table is:
%             Contents
%             Session 1
%  paper 1              |  page ref

%  ...                  |  ...
%  paper n              |  page ref
%             Session 2
%  paper 1              |  page ref
%  ...
%Hence the table has 2 columns and 1 (contents) + number of papers + number of sessions rows
table = Selection.Tables.Add(Selection.Range, 1 + height(filt_pres) + numel(unique(strcat(filt_pres.Topic, num2str(filt_pres.TopicNumber)))), 2);
table.Columns.Item(1).SetWidth(400, 3);
table.Rows.AllowBreakAcrossPages = false;
%First row of table is the header. Just one cell with 'Contents' with the TOC Title style
table.Rows.Item(1).Cells.Merge;
table.Rows.Item(1).Range.Select;
Selection.Style = wdoc.Styles.Item('TOC Title');
Selection.TypeText('Contents');
%Now fill the session and paper rows
lasttopic = '';    
lastnumber = 0;
%if the topic name or number of the current paper is different from lasttopic, it's the start of a new session
tablerow = 1;  %to keep track of which is being fillef
for row = 1:height(filt_pres)
    tablerow = tablerow + 1;
    newtopic = filt_pres.Topic{row};
    newnumber = filt_pres.TopicNumber(row);
    if ~(strcmp(newtopic, lasttopic) && newnumber == lastnumber)
        %start of a new session. Change row to a session row by merging the two columns and setting the style to TOC Topic
        lasttopic = newtopic;
        lastnumber = newnumber;
        table.Rows.Item(tablerow).Cells.Merge;
        table.Rows.Item(tablerow).Range.Select;
        Selection.Style = wdoc.Styles.Item('TOC Topic');
        Selection.TypeText(sprintf('%s %d', lasttopic, lastnumber));
        tablerow = tablerow + 1;
    end
    %fill row with paper and reference. Paper cell is made of two lines with two different styles
    %first line is paper title. second line is paper authors. 
    table.Cell(tablerow, 1).Range.Select
    Selection.Style = wdoc.Styles.Item('TOC Paper Title');
    Selection.TypeText(filt_pres{row, 5}{1}); %row 5 is title
    Selection.TypeText(char(10));
    Selection.Style = wdoc.Styles.Item('TOC Paper Authors');
    authors = filt_pres{row, 6}{1};
    authors = regexprep(authors, '\n.*', '');  %remove affiliations
    authors = regexprep(authors, '\s*\([^)]*\)\s*', ''); %remove affiliations references
    Selection.TypeText(authors);
    Selection.Font.Italic = false;
    table.Cell(tablerow, 2).Range.Select
    Selection.Style = wdoc.Styles.Item('TOC Paper Page');
    Selection.TypeText('');
    Selection.InsertCrossReference(2, 7, strrep(filt_pres.Reference{row}, '-', ''), true); %2 is wdRefTypeBookmark, 7 is wdPageNumber, true for hyperlink    
end
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