MATLAB: Do I receive an error when using “xlswrite” to write a cell array into a spreadsheet on MacOS

Question

I am using the function "xlswrite" to write a cell array containing numeric and text data to a file. However, I am receiving an error:

Error using dlmwrite The input cell array cannot be converted to a matrix.

 Why do I receive this error and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

In order to use "xlswrite" on MacOS (or any system on which Excel is not available), the input must be a numeric matrix. This is a limitation of "xlswrite" .The following section of the documentation page for "xlswrite" discusses this limitation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2019a/matlab/ref/xlswrite.html#bue63np-7

Additionally, as of MATLAB R2019a, we no longer recommend using "xlswrite" for cross-platform and performance reasons.

Instead, in MATLAB R2019a and later, use "writecell" to write the cell array to a CSV. For more information, please refer to the following page:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2019a/matlab/ref/writecell.html

In earlier releases, you can convert the cell array to a table using "cell2table" and then use "writetable" to write it to a CSV:

>> T = cell2table(myCellArray);
>> writetable(T, 'myCSVFile.csv');