Reading Excel files on a server without Excel installed.

Hello,

I'm currently using Matlab on a new server on which no Excel is installed. I need to be able to read Excel files. Unfortunately, the basic read mode from Matlab is not sufficent for some xlsx files. How can I still read these files ?

I'm using Matlab 2015a on Windows Server 2012.

Thank you for your help.

[Abhilash Padma]

It is possible to read excel files without Excel installed. You can use xlsread and readtable methods in basic mode to achieve this.But, you are mentioning that basic read mode from Matlab is not sufficent for some xlsx files. What do you mean by 'not sufficient'? Are you getting any error if you use these methods?

Answer 1

[Julien Damond]

Hello Abhilash,

Thank you for your response. The problem I have is when writing a formatted Excel Sheet with xlsread without Excel installed. For example, one of the problems I have encountered is an error being thrown by the function biffparse:

[num, txt, raw] = xlsread( fileName );

which gives me the error

Error using xlsread (line 247)
File could not be read by biffparse.  Invalid record ID.

I've found in another post that reading files with xlsRead without Excell installed has also some limitations

https://ch.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/100550-why-does-xlsread-return-errors-with-some-spreadsheets-on-non-windows-platforms-in-matlab-7-6-r2008a

Finally, I write a Java code using the POI library from Apache that I compiled as jar and directly use in Matlab to read Excel files without Excel installed.

Best regards,