Search code examples
excelmatlabfile-ioxlsread

Why is xlsread returning empty?

I'm trying to read some data stored in a .xlsx file into MATLAB. However, using xlsread returns an empty data set.

data = xlsread('myFile.xlsx');

The sheet name is the standard 'Sheet1', so I know it's not looking for the wrong sheet.

I even checked to make sure the file exists, and went as far as to use uigetfile to ensure the path and string names are correct:

[fileName,dirName]=uigetfile('.xlsx');
data = xlsread(fullfile(dirName,fileName));

What am I doing wrong?

Solution

  • xlsread only returns numeric data when only one output is specified. If the .xlsx file contains only text data, it will return empty. To remedy this, specify the outputs:

    [fileName,dirName]=uigetfile('.xlsx');
[~,~,rawData] = xlsread(fullfile(dirName,fileName));

    will return the entire contents of the sheet without MATLAB parsing the results and deciding what's text and what's numeric data.