MATLAB: Xlswrite question on long strings (0x800A03EC)

xlswrite

Hi, I am having trouble with xlswrite using long strings. Here is the problem:
1>> smallstring='qwerty';
2>> bigstring=strcat(repmat('qwerty',1,200));
3>> length(bigstring) ans = 1200
4>> xlswrite('test.xls',{smallstring},'Sheet1','A1');
5>> xlswrite('test.xls',{bigstring},'Sheet1','A1'); % this is ok!
6>> xlswrite('test.xls',{smallstring,smallstring},'Sheet1','A1');
7>> xlswrite('test.xls',{smallstring,bigstring},'Sheet1','A1');
??? Error using ==> xlswrite at 211 Error: Object returned error code: 0x800A03EC
This is where I get stumped. I read in this : http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/en/data/1-3QJ5I3/index.html?solution=1-3QJ5I3
that xlswrite cannot write to excel strings longer than 1024 characters due to an excel (2003) limitation. This explains line 7, but line 5 works…why? Thanks
Philippe

Best Answer

I had the same problem with MS office 2003. I even submitted a bug report to Microsoft but didn't really get response. I think the actual threshold is 911 or 912 characters. Do a search you'll find plenty of similar complaints. What I found out was that this limitation did not apply when writing to the Excel file one cell at a time. So what I did was first try to write the data to the whole sheet, if error happens, then write the data one cell at a time. It's really a pain at the butt if you have a big sheet of data but only a few of them exceed the character limit. Microsoft really should fix the problem.
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