How can I use 'textscan' to read data from Sheet2 of an Excel file?

As said in question, want to know if textscan can be used to scan data from Sheet2 of an Excel file?

Thanks for any help.

[per isakson]

The simple answer is NO; textscan reads formatted data from text file or string.

[Tahir Ameen]

Thanks for clearing. One thing more on textscan, I think it can read data from .csv file (not certain though), and if that's the case then what about scanning data from Sheet2?

Thanks.

[per isakson]

textscan is good for reading csv-files that consists of a header and columns of data (date, time, text, numeric). It's fast, but it requires reading of the documentation.

"[...] what about scanning data from Sheet2?" Not sure, I understand. It would need a two step process: save as csv-file and read with textscan. However, Matlab supports reading excel-files directly with other functions, e.g. readtable

[Tahir Ameen]

Thanks per isakson. I would go for a two step process as you said. That seems plausible.

[Bob Thompson]

Why do you need to use textscan at all? Why not just use readtable, or xlsread as @per isakson mentioned? You will have a difficult time saving a multi-sheet excel file as a csv file, since the csv format doesn't support multiple sheets, as far as I am aware.

If you're concerned about making sure you properly capture all text and numeric data from a non-generic table in an excel file, then xlsread has multiple options for outputs, which allow text and data combinations.

[numeric,text,all] = xlsread('data.xlsx',2);

[Tahir Ameen]

Thanks Bob for giving me insight into the problem. I know about xlsread and readtable functions but I have got to use textscan in order to read/capture a time data (such as 12:34:56.123) from a csv file (or maybe an xlsx file later). I did use xlsread but then using xlswrite on a new xlsx file changed the format of the time into something like a fractional number (for instance .54321). So the point was to keep the format same; and using textscan/xlswrite combination applied on 'Sheet1' of my csv file did it perfectly - kept the format same. Having done this on Sheet1 with success, I am more interested now to apply it on Sheet2 but there doesn't seem to be a way to give an input argument like SheetNo. to textscan command.

Thanks anway.

[Jan]

@Tahir Ameen: CSV files do not have sheets. A CSV file is a text file and there is no way to define something like a sheet in it. Then neither textscan cannot have the power to select a sheet. Sheets are properties of binary XLS and XLSX files. There is no way to use a tool written to import text files of a certain format to import binary files on another format.

Summary: textscan imports text files only and text files do not have sheets. If you need to import sheets, use readtable or xlsread.

Now you reveal, that you are struggeling with dates. Of course this can be solved directly without the need of the time-consuming indirection over CSV files. Please post the current code and an example file. Then it is possible to suggest a solution.

[per isakson]

Caveat: Personally I try to avoid Excel. What looks like datetime in Excel may be a character string or "datenum of Excel" presented as datetime. xlsread reads the first as a character string and the latter as a "strange number".

See: https://se.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/25216-reading-time-dates-from-excel#answer_33117

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Try

readtable( _______, 'DatetimeType', 'exceldatenum' );

See the documentation.