error message when opening matlab file

I am trying to open a matlab file and it gives me the following error. This matlab file was copied on a usb stick from my desktop computer to my notebook and now it gives me this error:

Error using load
Number of columns on line 2 of ASCII file C:\Users\kevin\Desktop\matlab.mat must
be the same as previous lines.

Error in uiimport/runImportdata (line 456)
                    datastruct = load('-ascii', fileAbsolutePath);

Error in uiimport/gatherFilePreviewData (line 424)
        [datastruct, textDelimiter, headerLines]= runImportdata(fileAbsolutePath,
        type);

Error in uiimport (line 240)
[ctorPreviewText, ctorHeaderLines, ctorDelim] = ...

[Image Analyst]

You forgot to attach the file.

[AA]

The file is 6 gigabyte

[Geoff Hayes]

AA - the file is named as if it were a mat file, but the error message indicates that it could be an ASCII file. I get this same if I create a text file as with the contents set as

 2 3 4
 5 6 7 8

and then use load('someFile.txt'). Are you expecting every row in your file to have the same number of columns?

[Image Analyst]

Then attach a smaller part of it. You're probably not going to be able to read in a 6 GB file into memory all at one time anyway.