MATLAB: Reading greek letters!

chargreekreadcell

I need to read text from an EXCEL file that will include greek letters in some cells. While I can transform the letters (e.g., spelling out "alpha" in place of the actual letter), I need to preserve the content. Currently, when I read the file using readcell, I get the greek letters in the text, but as soon as I try to do anything with them they get substituted with question marks. This is problematic, as I need to make decisions based on the text, and can't do that if every theta, eta, and nu is just going to become identical ?'s.
So, any ideas?
EDIT: For clarification on "…but as soon as I try to do anything…"
Below, the word tau, by itself, is the greek letter itself
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>>Text = readcell(File,'Sheet',Sheet);
>>VN = char(Text(2,1));
VN =
tau
>>switch VN
case tau
A = 'tau';
otherwise
A = 'ERROR';
end
>>A
A =
'ERROR';
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Please note that when I call VN, I see the letter tau on the screen. When I save it in an .mat file and reopen, VN = '?'.
In essense, I need a way to do the reverse of what char(945) would do – where char(945) takes a MATLAB-manipulatable value and produces a greek letter, I need something that will take a greek letter and produce a MATLAB manipulative value (like Unicode or '\alpha').

Best Answer

[continued from comment section under the answer]
If you're just referencing single greek letters, you could use the double() value for those characters.
For example, the double() value for tau is 
value = double('τ')  % 964, lower case
value = double(upper('τ'))  % 932, upper case
So when you read in the letters, you can instantly convert them to their numeric values. 
VN = double(Text{2,1});
and then in your switch statement, 
switch VN
    case [932, 964] % for upper and lower cases
        % code
    otherwise
        error()
end
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