Is it at all possible to use the 'range' option in xlsread in Matlab 2012a on a Mac?

Hi,

I recently changed from Windows to a Mac-system and I've been trying to somehow import data from an excel file while using the 'range' option in xlsread. I'm running Mountain Lion, Matlab 2012a for Mac and Excel for Mac 2011.

I found heaps of help on Matlab Central. A few workarounds were mentioned for this kind of problem. I tried the standard

[num,txt,raw] = xlsread('example_mac.xls',1,'C3:E5');

which resulted in

Warning: Range cannot be used in 'basic' mode.  The entire sheet will be loaded. 
> In xlsread at 199

and then I found a suggestion here

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/43872-alternative-to-xlsread-from-website-data-on-mac-matlab-r2012a

which suggested the command

A = dataset('XLSFile','example.xls','Sheet','T0NSW.1','Range','C2:E5');

which again resulted in this warning

Warning: Range cannot be used in 'basic' mode.  The entire sheet will be loaded. 
> In xlsread at 199
  In dataset.readXLSFile at 14
  In dataset.dataset>dataset.dataset at 344

I thought that the functionality of xlsread would be somewhat more general from 2012a onwards. I somehow understood that xlsread would available in the general mode and not just the basic mode, but I might have misunderstood that.

The xls-files I'm using are Excel 97-2003 files, I re-saved them all on the Mac system using Excel for Mac 2011.

The only question I have is:

Can I somehow import data from an Excel file while defining a specific range within the file?

Is there a workaround for this? If yes, a link to the solution would be sufficient. I looked for about a day now and I can't find a solution.

Thank you very much,

Arne

[Alec Jacobson]

If others end up here, I managed to read ranges on mac by opening the .xls in Excell and exporting as .xlsx. xlsread seems to know how to read ranges of .xlsx files.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

The range facility requires using ActiveX to talk to excel. That isn't possible on OS-X or Linux (or anything other than MS Windows) as ActiveX only exists on MS Windows.

Answer 2

[Arne]

Thank you Walter. Do you know of a clever workaround? -Arne

[Walter Roberson]

Read the entire file and throw the rest away.