How to combine specific columns from one array into another array

I have imported an excel spreadsheet as a string array and I need to pull out specific columns from this array that represent data obtained under certain conditions, to be used for further data processing

janimpedance is my 106x41 string array the relevant values are from rows 8 to 106. The first 7 rows contain charcters describing the conditions that were used in obtaining the data. I wanted to combine the values from every 6th column into a single array. I have been using newvariable=str2array((janimpedance(rowstart:rowstop,column)) to create the new variable and I was hoping to streamline the process so I don't have to manually enter the information for each variable.

Thanks

[James Tursa]

Posting a small sample of data would help.

[Brandon burns]

"% Module: Sweep, ID: c0p1t9p1cfm0"	""	""	""	""
"% Devices: DEV4351"	""	""	""	""
"% Time: 2021/01/11 17:44:51"	""	""	""	""
"% Impedance 1 Sample Imag(Z), /dev4351/imps/0/sample.ImagZ"	""	""	""	""
"% Impedance 1 Sample Real(Z), /dev4351/imps/0/sample.RealZ"	""	""	""	""
"% Frequency (Hz)"	" Impedance 1 Sample Imag(Z)  Impedance (Ohm)"	" Impedance 1 Sample Real(Z)  Impedance (Ohm)"	""	""
"1"	"21.44048776"	"4573.587521"	"-21.44048776"	"-163.2117738"
"1.141963503"	"-21.04963158"	"4612.747323"	"21.04963158"	"137.9444578"
"1.304080641"	"-24.82972845"	"4636.269237"	"24.82972845"	"141.0451397"
"1.489212497"	"25.28507847"	"4623.18278"	"-25.28507847"	"-126.4890328"
"1.700626319"	"13.23952088"	"4645.459287"	"-13.23952088"	"-57.44376346"
"1.942053188"	"-2.400680934"	"4622.61499"	"2.400680934"	"9.211664584"
"2.217753861"	"8.295295304"	"4629.761629"	"-8.295295304"	"-27.78690695"
"2.532593967"	"-17.98209042"	"4622.546068"	"17.98209042"	"52.91099117"
"2.892129877"	"12.89723478"	"4615.162084"	"-12.89723478"	"-33.33817811"
"3.302706765"	"7.474625656"	"4561.41374"	"-7.474625656"	"-17.32047063"

This is just a small section of the data that makes up the string array. I need to combined the columns of the impedance measurements into unique arrays to make it easier to process the data later on.

[dpb]

Better yet would be to attach the spreadsheet -- and read the numeric data as numeric instead of as string.

Looking at the results, it appears that

data=readtable('yourfile.ext','HeaderLines',6,'ReadVariableNames',0);

would work; resulting in a table with variable names Var1 thru Var5

Obviously the first variable is Frequency; I'm not sure how to interpret the Real/Imaginary components of the other four; you can set variable names as desired for convience with

data.Properties.VariableNames={'Frequency', 'ZImag', ...};

with a cell array of five names for the five columns.

[Brandon burns]

Is it possible to repeat the VariableNames. As the table I'm looking at have 40 to 50 variables. I would rather not have to name them all I was hoping to name the first 6 variables and have it repeat over the remaining columns.

[dpb]

You can't have duplicated variable names, no, that would not lead to a way to unambiguously name a column by name.

Default names are Var1, Var2, ... VarN

If variables are related, here might be a place to use an array for the data instead and then refer to the desired column by indexing into the array.

Again, attaching a section of the actual file would help us help you...instead of guessing about stuff.