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xlswrite - legacy

version 1.2.0.1 (5.58 KB) by Michelle Hirsch

Michelle Hirsch (view profile)
Easily create a Microsoft Excel format spreadsheet from MATLAB®.
3.9
39 Ratings

5 Downloads

Updated 04 Dec 2019

GitHub view license on GitHub

NOTE: I built this a million years ago, before it was provided with MATLAB. I recommend you use xlswrite, or even better writetable, that have been in MATLAB for many years now.

Creates a Microsoft Excel format spreadsheet using the MATLAB ActiveX interface. This can also open the spreadsheet directly without ever saving to a file.

Nothing too fancy:
- Supports arbitrary number of header lines
- Supports column headers
- Writes a single matrix
- Can write to specific sheets (thanks Fahad!)

Example:
m = rand(100,4);
header = 'This is some introductory information at the top of my spreadsheet.';
colnames = {'Ch1','Ch2','Ch3','Ch4'};
filename = 'myfile.xls';
xlswrite(m,header,colnames,filename);

Will create a spreadsheet named myfile.xls

Cite As

Michelle Hirsch (2020). xlswrite - legacy (https://www.github.com/michellehirsch/xlswrite--Legacy), GitHub. Retrieved .

Comments and Ratings (46)

Shah Muhammad Fahad

Shah Muhammad Fahad (view profile)

mohamed eltahan

mohamed eltahan (view profile)

I am a starter in Matlab and I have faced a small problem.
I want to write the program so that some variable values can be writen into excel. eg. (A=12, B=14,C=15...)
However, since this program will be run many times and update each of the variables into excel. So Everytime, I need to writen in a new row to ensure there is no overwriting. for instant:

xlswrite('Z:\junk\new.xls',ProbeName,'Gain','A3');
xlswrite('Z:\junk\new.xls',GainPX(1),'Gain','B3');
xlswrite('Z:\junk\new.xls',GainNX(1),'Gain','C3');

However, since new.xls contain lots of those information (It will update each experiment result). Every time I run this program, I want it automatically find the correct address under the last update. The problem is I don't know how many update were in the excel so I cannot determine which row i will begin to write.

Is there any command so that I can find whats the last row of an excel document so that I can ensure where should I update my data to this excel file. Many Thanks.

Michelle Hirsch

Michelle Hirsch (view profile)

Just a note to requests for new features - the xlswrite that has shipped with MATLAB since R14 (MATLAB 7) offers much more flexibility than mine, so I encourage you to check it out if this one doesn't address your needs.

sophie neve

sophie neve (view profile)

well, that is sad you do not accept any number in the titles of the columns... for example, if you want to have
frequency1 = 10 as a title
...

Xavier

Xavier (view profile)

Hi, I want to know if there are some way to write in excel 2007 format (*.xlsx)

djr djr

D R

Does not work as written

Chandra B K

Works very well but probably an addition to the functionality could be writing row headers (titles) ?
Maybe there is a way to do it using the current version, but I was unable to do it!

Laura Woodworth

Hi,
Is there any way to get xlswrite to either write to a file name that has been date/time stamped, or write to a generic file name with a worksheet that has been date/time stamped?

The code I am working on is meant to be run multiple times, to generate sets of answers, and I am trying to prevent having to alter the code each time for a unique file name.

Thanks for any help!

Laura

Matthieu Baudry

LAKISHA GUINN

Hi,
Could you please let me know if there is a way to use xlswrite to save to the next empty row. I am trying to use the built-in xlswrite function to save data to an existing excel file. Is there code that will detect the location of the next empty row and save the data there? I tried the following code but it gives me an error: [num txt DataRange]=xlsread(fileName);
[z v]=size(DataRange)
z=z+1%gives the number of the next empty row
range=sprintf('A \b%d',z)%range should start in column A of row
xlswrite(fileName,data,1, range);

Thanks

Mohammed JADOUI

Hello,
Could you please let me know if there is any version of xlswrite which handles Column and Row headers? If yes, may I have the '.m' code?
Thanks a lot
Mohammed

Moji Muda

Mark Hayworth

This functionality is now built in to the core MATLAB product. There are now built-in functions like xlswrite, xlsread, xlsinfo, etc. (See the help entry on Excel.) So you most likely won't need to download this code.

vijay krishna

Santosh Pandey

In order to create new worksheets if the sheetname does not exist, modify the section "% Make the specified sheet active." from the code "xlswrite.m" as shown below.

% Make the specified sheet active.
try
Sheets = Excel.ActiveWorkBook.Sheets;
target_sheet = get(Sheets, 'Item', sheetname);
catch
% Error if the sheet doesn't exist. It would be nice to create it, but
% I'm too lazy.
% The alternative to try/catch is to call xlsfinfo to see if the sheet exists, but
% that's really slow.
% error(['Sheet ' sheetname ' does not exist!']);

% Creating new sheet if it does not exist
hWSs=op.worksheets;
target_sheet = invoke(hWSs,'Add');
target_sheet.Name=sheetname;
end;

zmeb olivier

I am using windows 2000 and when I save data into the sheet2, data that were on the sheet1 disappeard.

tiago duperray

Dimitri Shvorob

The function works great (except for that irritating 65535-means-NaN thing) on my computer; however, testing my program on a different PC, with Excel 2003, I received error message

??? Invoke Error, Dispatch Exception:
Source: Microsoft Office Excel
Description: Microsoft Office Excel cannot access the file 'N:\stats\MATLAB7\work'. There are several possible reasons:

? The file name or path does not exist.
? The file is being used by another program.
? The workbook you are trying to save has the same name as a currently open workbook.
Help File: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\1033\xlmain11.chm
Help Context ID: 0

No disks are write-protected, no Excel files are open. Could the authors please test the m-file's compatibility with Excel 2003?

Dimitri Shvorob

On my PC, with Excel 2002, spreadsheets generated by the function have '65535' whenever a NaN was; in addition, to make numbers show in a reasonable format (e.g. with two decimal places), one needs to go through the steps of selecting the range and formatting cells as 'numeric'. Would it be possible to let user avoid this small but unnecessary hassle?
Thank you.

Michael Kleder

Oh yes.

Brad Hicks

Just what I needed.....Thanks!

Anadi Mahajan

be careful about the kind of filenames you pass. by default the results are stored in the working directory. To use an absolute path modify the lines 99 and 104 to avoid using the pwd and filesep.
Replace
invoke(op, 'SaveAs', [pwd filesep filename]);
with
invoke(op, 'SaveAs', filename);

And also
Replace
op = invoke(Excel.Workbooks, 'open', [pwd filesep filename]);
With
op = invoke(Excel.Workbooks, 'open', filename);

This should allow you to pass any arbitrary pathname as long as the file can be created in the path you specify, the function will work fine.

Great job!!

Ted Maddess

Bloody marvelous

Omri Barak

great, here's the code to add sheet in case it doesn't exist:

% Make the specified sheet active.
try
Sheets = Excel.ActiveWorkBook.Sheets;
target_sheet = get(Sheets, 'Item', sheetname);
catch
try
target_sheet = invoke( Sheets, 'add' );
set( target_sheet, 'name', sheetname );
catch
error(['Sheet ' sheetname ' does not exist!, and could not be created']);
end
end;

mathieu jerome

terry wu

Great. It really help me a lot!

Uday Desai

Very Smart. Great Job. It works.

Rob Morse

Nice one.. would be nice to be able to set an option to ask for a filename with a dialog? Thanks!

Fahad Al Mahmood

It's a great function indeed and I'm glade it is going to be a part of (MATLAB 7.0)! My only suggestion is to add an option for writing to a selected sheet.

Eric Altshuler

Worked like a charm, it's great. Thanks a lot

Eric

M LG

pong tor

so cool!

John Muller

This function is really hot -- it's simple, well written, easy to use and fairly robust. The author has included generous comments in the function, which allow the user to make simple changes easily, in order to tailor the function to your specific needs. WELL DONE!

Evaristo Hernández

rajneesh agrawal

this add in really helped me a lot. thanks for it

Moti Huber

Great !
Thanks

Chris Patscheck

Very good add in. Can be a bit slow, but who really needs fast data transfer to excel. I am getting a lot of use out of this, and it kept me from writing my own function to take care of this.

Thanks, Chris

Billot adrien

Thanks for sharing it, it's really helpful. It can be easily modified to add a 'file update' option...just one thing : Excel ActiveX server creation sometimes bugs if the function is applied several times. In that case, it's better to open only one ActiveX server and to close it outside of the function, after computation !

Femi Omitaomu

This is very good. Thanks for sharing it.

ken stessens

Very helpful indeed. The option that is still missing in my opinion, is to add new data in an existing file for which you did already make a layout in excel. Let's say, not only create a file, but also update the cells in an existing excel layout, and this without opening the excel file or even the excel program... Thanks for letting me know if the code has been added ;-)

J S

thanks, useful

Hein Hardy

Thank you very much, you just saved us an increadible amount of time

M. S.

helpful

B Donley

Nice, but you aren't really using ActiveX to it's full potential which will let you format the cells, shade, border and so forth. You can do the exact same thing without purchasing ActiveX by just giving a tab-delimited (tab spaced) ASCII file the extension .xls and calling "excel filename" through a command prompt (type help !). Nice that you can open without saving though...that is definitely useful.

Saurabh Singal

this is brilliant.
I was thinking of something along these lines, and just because Scott was profiled as a free t-shirt winner, I happened to click on his profile and found this utility.

Updates

1.2.0.1

Just updated description.
1.2.0.0

Moved code to GitHub.
1.1.0.0

minor changes to description and summary
1.0.0.0

Fix bug in how I compute column names. Thanks to Mark Hayworth for both finding and fixing the bug.

Oops - uploaded wrong file!

Incorporates fixes and enhancements provided in modified versions submitted to MATLAB Central. Much thanks to the contributing authors!

Fix for >=52 columns (xlswrite_mod)

Can now write to a specific sheet (xlswrite2)

Fix stupid error in documentation
MATLAB Release Compatibility
Created with R2019b
Compatible with any release
Platform Compatibility
Windows macOS Linux