Using readtable() for Excel file where only one column has mixed numbers and text

Hello,

When using readtable() for an Excel file, there are thirteen columns, some of which are only text and most of them only numbers. The first column, and identifier, sometimes is integers and sometimes text. If it starts out integers, the text ones become NaN.

Is there a way to read only one column as text even if it starts out as number? I'd rather not read it ALL in as text and then convert the rest one-by-one. Looked through the readtable() documentation and didn't see this.

Thanks.

Doug Anderson

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Of course you can specify the class, the simplest approach is probably via DETECTIMPORTOPTIONS and SETVARTYPE:

fnm = 'filename.xlsx';
opts = detectImportOptions(fnm);
opts = setvartype(opts,1,'string');
tbl = readtable(fnm,opts)