Why READTABLE skips the first line ?

I have this Excel file (it's just a simplified detail) with different variables (only numeric or text, with nan values). Each line correspond to a patient.

If I use readtable, MATLAB skips the first line without warning.

I can use readcell instead but i want to understand why MATLAB makes this choice.

If I move the first line elsewhere, everything is OK.

Any explanation ?

Thank you in advance.

SAINTHILLIER Jean Marie

data = readtable('Test_pb.xlsx')

data = 2x4 table
          A          B       C       D
    _____________    _    _______    _

    {'SKIN-0002'}    1    {'yes'}    3
    {'SKIN-0003'}    3    {'yes'}    4

Answer 1

[Mohammad Sami]

You can modify the behaviour of read table function by optional arguments. What you want to do it specify the Number of header lines to skip at the beginning of the file, specified as NumHeaderLines and either 0 or a positive integer. If unspecified, readtable automatically detects the number of lines to skip.

[Jean-Marie Sainthillier]

I tried that first, but it doesn't work

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

"Why READTABLE skips the first line ?"

Possibly because all of the text are shared strings, which perhaps confuses the READTABLE heuristics.

In any case, you do not need to use READCELL:

data = readtable('Test_pb.xlsx', 'DataRange','A2', 'VariableNamesRange','A1')

data = 3x4 table
          A           B        C        D 
    _____________    ___    _______    ___

    {'SKIN-0001'}    NaN    {'no' }    NaN
    {'SKIN-0002'}      1    {'yes'}      3
    {'SKIN-0003'}      3    {'yes'}      4