Is there a way for Matlab to use excel files without excel installed?

We are being told that we cannot use Microsoft Office with our current OS setup. Our Matlab program pulls necessary information from excel files. If excel is removed from the computer, will Matlab still be able to access the .xls files and use them? My initial though is that there has to be a .dll file associated with the installation of excel in order for this operation to work. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Have a look at the documentation for "basic mode" in xlsread(). There are some kinds of files that MATLAB can handle using internal code.