Need help increasing the speed of my code processing .xlsx files

Hello, I am trying to increase the speed of my code. This project is meant to read through a folder of xlsx files with over 6000 files. Right now, it takes about an hour to go through 4000. I cannot share the files it reads, but they are xlsx files with names and dates at the top (which is what I’m an looking for and writing into the table) but they also contain 3-4 pictures in each file (that really increase the file size). I do not care about the photos but did not know if that contributes to the slow speed of this code.

If anyone knows a way to increase the speed with keeping all the same functions, that would be much appreciated.

%% Problem 1
o = 1;
prompt = " (1) or (2): ";
Answer = input(prompt);
s1= ["Graphics"; "Pictures"; "Sheet"]; % name of sheets that you want the code to skip over so it can avoid errors.
Errors = 0;
if (Answer == 1)
    fds = fileDatastore('*.xlsx', 'ReadFcn', @importdata);
    fullFileNames = fds.Files;
    numFiles = length(fullFileNames);
    o = 1;
    for k = 1 : numFiles
        fprintf('Now reading file %s\n', fullFileNames{k});
        [status,sheets] = xlsfinfo(fullFileNames{k});
        sheet = string(sheets);
        S = length(sheets);
        i=1;
        for x = i:S
            p = sheet(1,i);
            s2 = p;
            tf = strncmpi(s1,s2,2);
            tfs = sum(tf);
            if tfs == 0
                [~,~,dat]=xlsread(fullFileNames{k},p);
                dat=[dat(3,1) dat(3,2) dat(3,3) dat(3,4)];
                i= i+1;
                TableOfValues(o,:) = dat;
                o = o +1;
            else
            end
        end
    end
elseif (Answer == 2)
    fds = fileDatastore('*.xls', 'ReadFcn', @importdata);
    fullFileNames = fds.Files;
    numFiles = length(fullFileNames);
    o = 1;
    % Loop over all files reading them in and plotting them.
    for k = 1 : numFiles
        fprintf('Now reading file %s\n', fullFileNames{k});
        [status,sheets] = xlsfinfo(fullFileNames{k});
        sheet = string(sheets);
        S = length(sheets);
        i=1;
        for x = i:S
            try
                p = sheet(1,i);
                [~,~,dat]=xlsread(fullFileNames{k},p);
                dat=[dat(3,4) dat(3,10) dat(4,4)];
                i= i+1;
                TableOfValues(o,:) = dat;
                o = o +1;
            catch
                Text = ['Error In Previous File Format', p];
                disp(Text);
                Errors = Errors + 1;
            end
        end
    end
else
    disp("Error")
end

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I'd try using readmatrix or readcell instead of xlsread and see if that helps.

[Kyle]

Thank you, you have saved me so much time.

[Image Analyst]

You're welcome. Well that was easy (for me at least). Thanks for accepting! 🙂