readtable decide which coloumns are read as string and which as number. xlsx file

Hi

Im trying to read an xlsx table, but readtable gives me the wrong format. some of my coloums are read as numbers and not strings. Thereby returning a NAN instead of the string i needed. My question. is there a way to force the datatype on readtable?

here is an example of how my data is set together in my input table

after reading into readtable it looks like this

RT  = readtable("file.xlsx")    

and here is the output

Answer 1

[Arif Hoq]

i have tried to make your excel and applied readtable function..see the result.

A=readtable('example_2.xlsx','ReadVariableName',false);

[Magnus Rasmussen]

This is one way of solving it. Thank you very much.

I managed to solve the issue myself actually.

explanation: my datasheet had a lot empty cells between the string cells. I filled them out with string element "NE". This way each coloums contained a majority of string instead of numbers and blanks. Thereby readtable recognized the entire coloums as strings instead of numbers.

Thank you for your time

[Arif Hoq]

my pleasure

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

Magnus, detectImportOptions and subsequent modifications on what it returns are what you are looking for. You can set any or all of the variable types, and a whole lot more.