xlsread is importing the date strings as a serial date in my mac script but not on my windows script

2 views (last 30 days)
I've been writing a script on my mac using matlab R2015b (same version on windows) to import a large spreadsheet and it imports fine on my mac with the date strings converted to serial number. When I load the same script to my windows OS it will not read the date strings nor convert them. I have tried several way around [num, txt, raw] and and manipulating it that way however, I have found that the date vector has been very odd and was thinking there might be some setting that is awry.
If anyone can help that would be much appreciated.
  1 Comment
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 30 Dec 2015
I wonder if you could extract a small portion and post the file? Say one column with the date and one column with numeric, and perhaps 3 rows.

Sign in to comment.

Accepted Answer

Jon Brenner
Jon Brenner on 4 Jan 2016
Edited: Jon Brenner on 6 Jan 2016
Hi Thomas,
xlsread behaves differently on Macs than on Windows. I think what you need is xlsread's 'basic' mode. 'basic' mode will return Excel serial date numbers on all platforms.
>> [num, txt, raw] = xlsread('myfile.xlsx', 1, '', 'basic');
Call "help xlsread" or "doc xlsread" for more details on how to use xlsread.

More Answers (1)

Rahul Goel
Rahul Goel on 4 Jan 2016
Hi Thomas,
The community will be able to help you better if you could share a sample code and the output of your script both on mac and windows.

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!