speed up xlsread

I have imported data from excel into matlab where I have several spreadsheets. I have used:

files = dir('*.xls');
%read data from excel into matlab
for i=1:length(files);
    File_Name{i}=files(i,1).name;%Removes the file names from 'files'
    [num{i},txt,raw] = xlsread(File_Name{i},'Ble min');
end

So, each cell refers to each spreadsheet. Is there a quicker way of doing this? I heard actxserver could be used, would this be the case for me here?

thanks

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Try this:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/11907-multiple-import-edit-of-xls-files

Answer 2

[Karsten Reuß]

Small update on this one:

In versions of Matlab newer than 2013, readtable is much faster. I had some 300 files to import, xlsread took about 300 seconds, with actxserver about 100 seconds and with readtable 3 seconds.

You can then use table2cell, table2array, etc. to convert your data into cells and doubles.

[farzad]

>> tic;xls=xlsread(fname);toc;
Elapsed time is 2.230238 seconds.
>> tic;rdt= readtable(fname);toc;
Elapsed time is 2.156550 seconds.
>> tic;rdt= readmatrix(fname);toc;
Elapsed time is 2.511168 seconds.

It was a 14336 x 7 xlsx file. all numbers