MATLAB: Problem with datenum

arrays of stringscellsdatenumtime

Hi everybody!!
I have one quick question. I´m trying to convert the dates and the timestamps of my .mat file into numbers using datenum. Dates and timestamps are in different columns, but the problem is that when I type
date=dataFile(:,1);
timestamp=dataFile(:,2);
datenumber=datenum(date,'dd.mm.yy');
timestampnumber=datenum(timestamp,'dd.mm.yy');
I get the message error 
??? Error using ==> datenum at 182
DATENUM failed.
Caused by: Error using ==> datevec at 110 The input to DATEVEC was not an array of strings.
However, if I type
datafile=(finalData{:,2});
data2num=datenum(datafile); 
it works but just for the first element of the dates, but I need all the elements not just one. Do you have any ideas how can I solve this?
Just one extra detail, when I type whos this is what i get
EDU>> whos date timestamp
  Name               Size              Bytes  Class    Attributes
    date           31591x1             4296376  cell               
    timestamp      31591x1             4296376  cell
I hope you could help me out with this problem
thank you and have a nice day 🙂

Best Answer

I believe that the error is being thrown when you are trying to create datenumber. This could be because date contains a cell array of cells. Try the following code to see if this works:
datenumber = datenum([date{:}],'dd.mm.yy');
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