How to export a Matlab cell array to an Excel spreadsheet?

I have a cell array X={'A','B','C','D',A,B,C,D} where A,B,C and D are column vectors of equal size. I intended to create a spreadsheet by: >>xlswrite('X.xls',X) but I didnt get the values of the vectors in my spreadsheet. Maybe I didn't create the cell array properly (when I display the cell array, I get: >> X X =

    'A'             'B'             'C'             'D'      
    {241x1 cell}    {241x1 cell}    {241x1 cell}    {241x1 cell}
Can anyone provide any suggestions? Thanks.

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

X=[{'A','B','C','D'};A,B,C,D]
xlswrite('X.xls',X)

[Rinu]

That gives an error: >>X=[{'A','B','C','D'};A,B,C,D] Error using vertcat Dimensions of matrices being concatenated are not consistent.

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

Are you sure your arrays are the same size?

If your data looks like

A={1;2}
B={3;4}
C={5;6}
D={7;8}
X=[{'A','B','C','D'};A,B,C,D]
xlswrite('f',X)

%or

A={num2cell([1;2])}
B={num2cell([3;4])}
C={num2cell([5;6])}
D={num2cell([7;8])}
X=[{'A','B','C','D'};A{1},B{1},C{1},D{1}]
xlswrite('f',X)

%or give an example

[Rinu]

It worked! Thanks! The problem was I defined A,B,C and D as numerical arrays instead of as cell arrays. I now converted them to cell arrays using num2cell.

[Rini]

Is there a way to iteratively write a large cell array to excel file? I have an cell array of 20000 by 1 and in each cell there are varied number of strings. I tried xlswrite (filename,A) but it did nothing. Thanks!

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

It looks like A, B, C, and D are actually cell arrays, not regular numerical arrays. How did you create A, B, C, and D? Did you put braces around them when you created them? If so, you don't want to do that.

A = rand(5);  % OK.  A is a double array.
A = {rand(5)}; % Not okay - A is now a cell.

See the FAQ: http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#What_is_a_cell_array.3F

[Rinu]

Okay I see your point, but it doesn't help even if A,B,C,D are numerical arrays. Actually this is what I got at first: X =

    'A'               'B'               'C'               'D'        
    [241x1 double]    [241x1 double]    [241x1 double]    [241x1 double]

There was the same problem while trying to write the spreadsheet. Then I changed the numerical arrays to cell arrays by using num2cell, to see if that would help, but it didn't.

[Image Analyst]

Yeah you're right. Now that I think about it, it can write out a numerical array, but if you're going to combine them (strings plus numbers) then you need to have one big cell array where each cell is just one number (element) from the numerical array, not the whole array. So you'd need to do

ca = cell(25, 4);
ca{1,1} = 'A';
ca{1,2} = 'B';
ca{1,3} = 'C';
ca{,14} = 'D';
for k = 2:25
  ca{1, k} = A(k-1);
  ca{2, k} = B(k-1);
  ca{3, k} = C(k-1);
  ca{4, k} = D(k-1);
end

[Rinu]

Thanks a lot.

Answer 3

[João Araújo]

I have a follow up question. I'm looking to organize some data, and I have a cell array with some names. The cells aren't necessarily the same size, since I can have 5 names in one cell and 12 in the next. I have a total of 1783 cells, so I'm looking for an automated way to solve this issue. How can I export this cell array to an excel spreadsheet?