MATLAB: How to sequence series of excel files and extract certain rows:columns from each file automatically

Question

There are a series of excel files from 1 to 99, from file01.xlsx to file99.xlsx. I only want cells B1:C3 from each excel file. I used this code:

Efiles = dir('*.xlsx');
numfiles = length(Efiles);
mydata = cell(1,numfiles);
for k = 1:numfiles
      myfilename = sprintf('file%d.xlsx',k);
      mydata{k} = xlsread(Efiles(k).name);
end

Unfortunately, this extracts all the data from the excel file. I do not know how to utilize for loops to get the desired B1:C3 cells from each excel file.

Additionally, the workspace shows the extracted data as a cell array. How do you convert the cell array to regular array (matrix)? Otherwise, I can't use the data.

Thank you. (Sorry, MatLab beginner here, searched hours for answers, but struggling a lot).

<http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_process_a_sequence_of_files.3F > does NOT work in my case.

Answer 1

files = dir('*.xlsx') ;  % GEt all excel files in the folder 
N = length(files) ;   % total number of files 
iwant = cell(N,1) ; 
for i = 1:N
    iwant{i} = xlsread(files(i).name,'B1:C3');
end