Search string and get its position in excel using Actxserver

Is it possible to search for a string in an excel file from particular sheet and also get its position. I need to get data only from this column. So if the position is known, data from that column can be imported. for ex..

fullname = 'C:\Users\Documents\MATLAB\files\food_raw.xlsm;
sheet = 'kharif';
string = 'cotton';

I want to import data present in column "cotton".

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

I will just read the Excel file anyway and search the Raw data.

[Num,Txt,Raw]=xlsread(fullname,sheet);

Or, if 'cotton' is supposed to appear in the first row as the header, you might want to consider readtable() function and put your data in a Table.

[Ghenji]

xlsread might be time consuming if I want to read many excel files with sheet "kharif". Now I have the keyword If I can go to that position and then read whole column below would indeed save time. Cotton is not a header so that doesn't help. Anyway Thank you for your suggestion.