How to specify a date string format when using xlsread from Excel?

When I use xlsread to import dates, I receive the following warning: Warning: Successfully read the date/time strings using the format 'MM/dd/uuuu', but their format is ambiguous and could also be 'dd/MM/uuuu'. Specify a format string to avoid ambiguity.

How do I specify a date format when reading dates from Excel? I do not see an option to do so in xlsread.

[Jeremy Hughes]

Hi Kathrine,

Can you share some code? and a file? I'm not sure this is coming from XLSREAD. As far as I know, XLSREAD treats dates as text.

Jeremy

Answer 1

[Katherine Varga]

Oh I see, it was coming from the datetime function I was using when converting the string I had imported from Excel. Thank you.

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

Katherine, consider using readtable instead of xlsread. In recent versions, importing dates is much simpler than using xlsread.