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excelmatlabloopsmatlab-table

Automatically Create and Name Tables in Matlab from Excel Tabs

I have the following cell array which is a list of some (but not all) of the tab names in an excel file:

chosenTabs = 

'Screen'
'SectorAbsolute'
'SectorRelative'

How do I get it to read off each tab of the excel sheet according to what is on this list and return a table of the tab's contents? The new tables should have the same name as the tab that is read.

I have tried (for example to create a table called 'SectorAbsolute' containing the contents of the tab 'SectorAbsolute'):

char(chosenTabs(2))=readtable(inputFile,'Sheet',char(chosenTabs(2)))

but this returns the error:

You can not subscript a table using only one subscript. Table subscripting requires both row and variable subscripts.

Solution

  • A method utilizing a structure array:

    chosentabs = {'Sheet1', 'Sheet3'};
ntabs = length(chosentabs);

for ii = 1:ntabs
    mytables.(chosentabs{ii}) = readtable('test.xlsx', 'Sheet', chosentabs{ii});
end

    Which returns mytables, a structure array containing your tables. You can access your sheets explicitly (e.g. mytables.Sheet1) or by utilizing dynamic field referencing (e.g. mytables.(somestring))