Converting a Column to Numeric for Date/Time Format

I am trying to convert the first column to a character string, so I can split the character string values to create a Date/Time format to sort data later on. When I try to isolate the column in Matlab, it skips the first column and uses only the second column. Can anyone help me isloate the first column?

This is what I have tried so far

T = xlsread('Vibes.xlsx');

C = str2double(T(:,1));

T = xlsread('Vibes.xlsx');

C = T(:,1);

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

If you use the Import Data tool (in the Variable section on the Home tab of the toolstrip) you can import the data directly as a datetime array. Just specify the format. If you have multiple of these files in the same format to import, you could even create a script or function to automate the import process for the second and later files (and to see the code MATLAB used to import the data so you can learn from it.)

[Sarah Nolt-Caraway]

Unfortunately, with the current format of the column, I cannot just import it as DateTime. The result is NaT

[Sarah Nolt-Caraway]

The underscore between the Date and Time in the first column is what is causing this error, hence why I need to separate them

[Adam Danz]

They underscore can be included in the input format.

date = '2020-09-11_04:11:50.648000';
datetime(date,"InputFormat",'yyyy-MM-dd_hh:mm:ss.SSSS')

ans = datetime
   11-Sep-2020 04:11:50