Reading all values as a string from excel file

I have an excel file that includes, strings, numbers and time in the format "01:59.00"

When I use xlsread in Matlab to read in the sheet I am currently using [~, ~, alldata] = xlsread... however, my time variables are getting converted to decimals.

Is there any way I am able to keep the time variable or even read it as a string?

Thank you in advance

[Stephen23]

"my time variables are getting converted to decimals."

Nothing is "getting converted", in fact Excel stores dates as serial date numbers:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/datevalue-function-df8b07d4-7761-4a93-bc33-b7471bbff252

Ultimately all data stored on an Excel worksheet are either text or numeric: dates are numeric, so XLSREAD is giving you the actual data saved in the workbook. Formatting in Excel that interprets that serial date number and displays it in particular ways is purely an artifact of your OS's locale settings or the cell formatting.

Answer 1

[Voss]

Maybe you can just convert the decimal times to datetimes using the datetime() function, after reading them in.

now()

ans = 7.3855e+05

datetime(now(),'ConvertFrom','datenum')

ans = datetime
   24-Jan-2022 01:24:14

[Stephen23]

How does this account for the different epochs used by MATLAB's and Excel's serial date numbers ?

[Voss]

I'm going to guess it does not.

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

In Excel dates are stored as serial date numbers, so what you are getting is the raw data.

The best solution is to use READMATRIX or READCELL which will (either automagically or with some hints from you) import Excel's serial date numbers as DATETIME objects.

The next option, if you insist on using outdated XLSREAD, is to do that conversion yourself. There are many threads on this forum showing how, the simplest approach is to use DATETIME which has this conversion built in:

N = 39448.25 % Excel serial date number

N = 3.9448e+04

D = datetime(N,'convertFrom','excel')

D = datetime
   01-Jan-2008 06:00:00