How to get readcell to read leading empty columns and rows in spreadsheet

Say I have an Excel file with some entries, offset so that they start at B2 instead of A1 (see image below):

So column A is completely empty, and row 1 is completely empty.

Can I use readcell() so that it includes the empty leading columns and rows? I want to do this without specifying a full range (i.e., 'A1:J50') because I don't know how large my data is. I want MATLAB to find that out for me. If I do readcell(file,'Range','A1'), then it omits the leading row because it's empty, which is the issue I'm facing.

Answer 1

[Dabeer Ahmad]

I figured out my issue. I was using 'Range' instead of 'DataRange.' Using

readcell(file,'DataRange','A1')

makes sure you read in starting from cell A1, even if there's leading missing rows and columns.

Answer 2

[Arif Hoq]

please refer to this answer:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/90811-how-to-import-excel-file-including-empty-cells

You don't need to specify the range. readtable, readcell, readmatrix functions can export all your data from excel.

[Dabeer Ahmad]

I have a specific use case where it is easier for user to point to a piece of data by its cell location (i.e., 'B2'), but if I import the data using readcell() and there are empty leading rows or columns, then B2 might become item (1,1) in the cell array, which makes things complicated.

I know I can just

readcell(file,'Range','B2:B2')

in this case, but I would like to read in all the data first, then work with the matrix afterwards (that seems more efficient, especially because I'm extracting dozens of data points from a spreadsheet, and doing this for hundreds of sheets).

The link mentions you don't want to read in all empty cells, and I agree, but is there no way to just read in the leading empty rows and columns? Not the trailing ones?