Using strcmp to find data location in xls spreadsheets

Hello!

I'm trying to run analysis on information in rows on a spreadsheet.

What I would like to do, is have the user input a vector of names as a string, and then pull those usernames and related rows of information from a separate xls spreadsheet

For example: I would type in Mary L and Matlab would return for me the location of the information about Mary L in the spreadsheet

For example

function makeReport
[num,txt,raw] = xlsread[spreadsheet]

x = input('Type Usernames','s'_

userNames = strcat(x)

a = 1

for i = numel(userNames)

user = userName (a)
strcmp(user,raw(:,1)
userlocation = row of username location
completedM = raw(6,userlocation)
completedB = raw(5, userlocation)

% run calculations
.
.
.
log(a,1) = user
log(a,2) = completedM
log(a,3) = completedB
...

a=a+1

end

xlswrite('Report',log,1)
end

also is there any way that a user can copy and paste a row of text as an input? For some reason when I do this it will not let me use string functions on the loaded string