MATLAB: Delete sheet number 1 in excel

activexexcel

I want to delete sheet number 1 in excel. Here is the code I wrote:

   newExcel = actxserver('excel.application');
   excelWB = newExcel.Workbooks.Open(filepath,0,false);
   newExcel.Sheets.Item(1).Delete;
   excelWB.Save();
   excelWB.Close();
   newExcel.Quit();
   delete(newExcel);

Can anyone help me to solve this issue.

Best Answer

The problem is that by default Excel asks you to confirm that you really want to delete the worksheet. As excel is not visible, you don't see the confirmation dialog (a bit daft, I know!). You can verify this for yourself, by issuing:

newExcel.Visible = true;

before your delete command.

To fix your issue, simply tells excel to not display alerts with:

newExcel.DisplayAlerts = false;

before trying to delete the sheet.

Finally, instead of

newExcel.Sheets.Item(1).Delete;

I would use

excelWB.Sheets.Item(1).Delete;

The former delete a sheet in the active workbook, the later always in excelWB. The active workbook is most likely excelWB as you've just opened it, but it's always better to be explicit.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to control a variable number of sheets in excel files

Yasmine, it can be done with ActiveX. While more complicated, this will be much, much faster than using xlsread() if you have more than 1 file since you will need to launch and shutdown Excel only once, not 10 or more times (once for every single file that you have).

See the FAQ for how to loop over the workbook files, and then inside that loop, with a single specific workbook, you can use ActiveX to loop over the worksheets in that workbook. You just do something like this:

excelObject = actxserver('Excel.Application');
filePattern = fullfile(myFolder, '*.xls');
xlsFiles = dir(filePattern);
for k = 1:length(xlsFiles)
  baseFileName = xlsFiles(k).name;
  fullFileName = fullfile(myFolder, baseFileName);
  fprintf(1, 'Now reading %s\n', fullFileName);
  excelWorkbook = excelObject.workbooks.Open(fullFileName);
  worksheets = excelObject.sheets;
  numberOfSheets = worksheets.Count;
  for sheetIndex  = 1 : numberOfSheets 
    % Do whatever you want to do.
  end
end
excelObject.Quit;

Here's a utility where I use ActiveX to loop over worksheets, deleting empty ones:

% --------------------------------------------------------------------
% DeleteEmptyExcelSheets: deletes all empty sheets in the active workbook.
% This function loops through all sheets and deletes those sheets that are empty.
% Can be used to clean a newly created xls-file after all results have been saved in it.
function DeleteEmptyExcelSheets(excelObject)
try
  %   excelObject = actxserver('Excel.Application');
  %   excelWorkbook = excelObject.workbooks.Open(fileName);
  
  % Run Yair's program http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/17935-uiinspect-display-methods-properties-callbacks-of-an-object
  % to see what methods and properties the Excel object has.
  %   uiinspect(excelObject);
  
  worksheets = excelObject.sheets;
  sheetIndex = 1;
  sheetIndex2 = 1;
  initialNumberOfSheets = worksheets.Count;
  % Prevent beeps from sounding if we try to delete a non-empty worksheet.
  excelObject.EnableSound = false;
  % Tell it to not ask you for confirmation to delete the sheet(s).
  excelObject.DisplayAlerts = false;
  
  % Loop over all sheets
  while sheetIndex2 <= initialNumberOfSheets
    % Saves the current number of sheets in the workbook.
    preDeleteSheetCount = worksheets.count;
    % Check whether the current worksheet is the last one. As there always
    % need to be at least one worksheet in an xls-file the last sheet must
    % not be deleted.
    if or(sheetIndex>1,initialNumberOfSheets-sheetIndex2>0)
      % worksheets.Item(sheetIndex).UsedRange.Count is the number of used cells.
      % This will be 1 for an empty sheet.  It may also be one for certain other
      % cases but in those cases, it will beep and not actually delete the sheet.
      if worksheets.Item(sheetIndex).UsedRange.Count == 1
        worksheets.Item(sheetIndex).Delete;
      end
    end
    % Check whether the number of sheets has changed. If this is not the
    % case the counter "sheetIndex" is increased by one.
    postDeleteSheetCount = worksheets.count;
    if preDeleteSheetCount == postDeleteSheetCount;
      % If this sheet was not empty, and wasn't deleted, move on to the next sheet.
      sheetIndex = sheetIndex + 1;
    else
      % sheetIndex stays the same.  It's not incremented because the current sheet got deleted,
      % and all the other sheets shift down in their sheet number.  So now sheetIndex will
      % point to the same number which is the next sheet in line for checking.
    end
    sheetIndex2 = sheetIndex2 + 1; % prevent endless loop...
  end
  excelObject.EnableSound = true;
catch ME
  errorMessage = sprintf('Error in function DeleteEmptyExcelSheets.\n\nError Message:\n%s', ME.message);
  fprintf('%s\n', errorMessage);
  WarnUser(errorMessage);
end
return; % from DeleteEmptyExcelSheets
end % of DeleteEmptyExcelSheets

MATLAB: How to rename a sheet in Excel using the COM interface in MATLAB

You can rename an Excel sheet using the "Name" property of a sheet object. For example the following renames the first sheet of an Excel file:

filename = 'C:\SomeExcelFile.xls';
% Open Excel Automation server
Excel = actxserver('Excel.Application');
% Make Excel visible
Excel.Visible=1;
% Open Excel file
Workbook = Excel.Workbooks.Open(filename);
% Get the list of sheets in the workbook
Sheets = Excel.ActiveWorkbook.Sheets;
% Rename the first sheet
Sheets.Item(1).Name = 'This is sheet 1';

The following code then saves the Workbook, quits Excel and removes the COM server:

% Save the file
Workbook.Save();
% Quit Excel, remove the COM server and delete the related objects
Excel.Quit();
Excel.delete();
clear Excel;
clear Workbook;
clear Sheets;

Best Answer

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MATLAB: How to control a variable number of sheets in excel files

MATLAB: How to rename a sheet in Excel using the COM interface in MATLAB

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