Help: XLSREAD with an unpsecified number of colums

Hi

Instead of using xlsread(filename, -1) to choose interactively any region of data, how could I use the following function with a variable of colum?

inputdata=xlsread('c:\thm.xlsx','sheet1','a1:letter(x)')

Where, "letter" and "x" are colum variables. "letter" variable may be B, C, D, E, F or whatever. And "x" may be 1, 2, 3, 4 or whatever. They are not specified and depend on users. Are there any ways to execute the above function?

Khanh.

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

If you also want columns:

range = sprintf('%c%d', column+64, row);

This will only work up to column Z, after that you'll have to write a function to do the conversion, it's going to be something like:

if column <= 27 %one letter
  colletters = char(column + 64)
elseif column <= 27*28 %two letters
  column = column - 28;
  colletters = sprintf('%c%c', floor(column/27)+65, mod(column, 27)+65);
elseif ... %for three letters

[Khanh]

Hi Guillaume, Are there anyways to read data with the letter out of the number of the letters (from a to z)? For example, instead of using xlsread(filename, -1), how can I read data at aa1 colum (next to right of z1 colum?)

Answer 2

[Yona]

you can defined it in string.

for example if you have 4:

N=4;
st = ['A1:E' num2str(N)];
inputdata=xlsread('c:\thm.xlsx','sheet1',st)

you can replace the second line by:

st = strcat('A1:E', num2str(N))

[Guillaume]

I would actually use sprintf instead of num2str. In my opinion it makes the code clearer:

st = sprintf('A1:E%d', N);

[Khanh]

Thanks all. One more thing I forgot to add to my post, although I edited it.

How about the letter precedes with the number? For example: B1, B2, B3... C1, C2, C3..., D1, D2, D3...etc

[Yona]

it the same thing with letter you just dont need to transform it to string. if you get it in col

N=4;
col = 'B';
st = strcat('A1:', col, num2str(N));

it will give you A1:B4