LINUX xlswirte and xls read problem (Ubuntu)

Hello, my project work involves reading and writing data from excel.

Until Present I was working on Windows.

However, due to some unavoidable reasons, I will have to perform MATLAB coding in LINUX Platform.

xlswrite and xlsread does'nt work in linux as they are compatibl with Microsoft windwos only.. If I load some excel sheet, it shows text as NaN in raw type.

Is there any alternative for this ? Any other function available which is compatible with Linux and EXCEL both ?