MATLAB: Excel displaying unwanted date data

xlswrite

I have an array of date data as shown:
dates=
'12/23/2011'
'12/23/2011'
'12/23/2011'
'12/23/2011'
'12/23/2011'
I want to find out how many values of date data I have and write it into excel, so I have this code:
num=1:length(dates);
num=num’;
xlswrite(‘file_1.xls’, num, ‘sheet1’, ‘A1’)
xlswrite(‘file_1.xls’, dates, ‘sheet1’, ‘B1’)
The dates end up being displayed in excel fine but the array of 1 to fine labeled "num" displays an array in excel that looks like this: 1/1/1900
1/2/1900
1/3/1900
1/4/1900
1/5/1900
Does anyone know how I would fix this?

Best Answer

Excel is interpreting those cells as dates (e.g. one day from the start of 1-Jan-1900, etc.). Go into Excel and change the format of those cells from "date" to "number".
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