xlsread certain range of rows

Hi,

I have a very large excel file. When I used xlsread command it took very long time to read entire range. Therefore, I want to read just a part of it.

Column: Same as xlsread.

Row: 1:10000.

When I tried, xlsread(File,sheet,'1:1000'), it read all columns of 10645(?). However, I want to read the range of columns that xlsread loads automatically. I just want to cut off certain range of rows. Deleting rows after loading whole data is not an option because it took too much time.

Thank you.

Answer 1

[dpb]

You can enter any rectangular range argument to xlsread in Excel A1:X200 syntax. You must, however, know the ranges of interest this way. Or, create a named area in the spreadsheet that comprises the area of interest. It must also be contiguous, hence rectangular.

[Sungwoo Park]

The matlab, however, somehow detect column with data automatically. Is there anyway to set the range of column automatically? The number of column keeps increasing as data are collected.

[dpb]

"How" is more an Excel question than Matlab; xlsread is an m-file that does only a bunch of input verification/error-checking then calls the actual worker-functions that are either .mex or .m program files (hence source not viewable) that do all the hard work. Here's the list for R2014b; none of these m-files are human-readable to see just what they actually do.

 > C:\ML_R2014b\mcr...ab\iofun\private> *dir xlsread*.*
 ...
 Directory of  C:\ML_R2014b\mcr\toolbox\matlab\iofun\private\xlsread*.*

 8/29/14  15:25           1,109  xlsreadBasic.m
 8/29/14  15:25           1,274  xlsreadCOM.m
 8/29/14  15:25           1,244  xlsreadSplitNumericAndText.m
 8/05/14   9:21          32,256  xlsreadStr2Dbl.mexw32
 9/15/14  21:50             644  xlsreadStr2Dbl_mexw32.auth
 8/29/14  15:25             944  xlsreadTrimArrays.m
 8/29/14  15:25           3,629  xlsreadXLSX.m
 >

XLSREAD is a black-box for the end-user community; if you want more abilities you'll have to resort to COM/Active-X yourself or write VBA code on the Excel side or such.

The better solution is probably to have the wanted data written to a file on the side creating the Excel file in a more readily-accessible form for input.

[Stephen23]

The best solution would be to avoid using a propriety format like excel, and store the data in a file that is designed for storing and transferring data.