MatLab just working with Microsoft's Excel for Windows only

Hello,

Is there any technical reason why the users on Mac cannot have access to all the functionalities on the xlsread, xlswrite, or related commands ? Or is it just because of commercial interests ?

Thanks!

[Geoff Hayes]

I am running MATLAB on a Mac and am able to use xlsread and xlswrite. Have you found a specific feature that does not work?

[dpb]

Guess you'd have to ask TMW for specifics; I'd presumed (not having Mac) that if Excel for Mac were installed there would be the same functionality as there is for Windows w/ an Excel installation. I note that the Windoes version doc fro xlsread notes that "On Windows systems with Microsoft Excel software, xlsread reads any file format recognized by your version of Excel. If your system does not have Excel for Windows, xlsread operates in basic import mode, and reads only XLS, XLSX, XLSM, XLTX, and XLTM files."

Now, what the Mac doc's say I don't know...so the upshot is "I don't know" but does seem somewhat peculiar they've spelled out Windows specifically. Perhaps there are differences in the two that TMW has chosen to only support the more widely used platform???

[Kelly Kearney]

In response to Geoff's inquiry, yes, Matlab can throw errors trying to read older Excel files in basic mode, as I detailed in this question. This might be less of a problem now that Matlab on a Mac supports reading of .xlsx files (it didn't when I posted that question). I've never quite figured out exactly what it is that Matlab fails to parse, since the errors occur within the mexed subfunctions.

Answer 1

[Mukul Rao]

Hi,

To use the full functionality of “xlsread” and “xlswrite”, you need to have a COM server for Microsoft Excel installed on your machine. On Windows COM server installation is done along with Microsoft Excel installation. For Mac OS X, there is no COM server available to date and hence “xlsread” and “xlswrite” will work only in the basic mode.