How can I edit the output of xlsread to make each column of the Excel file a single variable in a structure?

I have a set of excel files, each of which contains three columns (2 examples are included). I am converting them to .mat files using the code

    files = dir('LIV Data*.xlsx');
    for k = 1:numel(files)
         [num,text,raw] = xlsread(files(k).name);
         [dummy, myName] = fileparts(files(k).name);
         save(myName)
    end

which works fine. However, I then want each of the columns to be an individual variable. I can load the files using the code

D = 'My Directory';
S = dir(fullfile(D,'LIV Data T= *.mat'));  %   Makes a structure with all files
N = numel(S);   %   Counts number of files

for ii = 1:N
    T = load(fullfile(D,S(ii).name));
    I = T.num
end

which loads each of the data sets as three columns. I then want to separate each of these columns into a single data set so that I can plot e.g. column 1 and column 3 against each other. How can I do this?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Note: Use ~ to ignore a function output instead of creating a dummy variable. So:

[~, myName] = fileparts(files(k).name);

The simplest way to create variables out of your excel data is to forget about the ancient xlsread and use the modern readtable which loads the spreadsheet into a table. If your excel file has a header readtable will detect that and use it to name the variables of the table. Otherwise, it'll use Var1, Var2, ... as names but you can easily change these.

I would recommend you keep the data as a single table rather than then separating it into individual variables.

Note that if you want to plot column 3 against column 1, you don't need to create individual variables for that anyway. With your current code, it's simply:

plot(num(:, 3), num(:, 1));

As a rule, it's never a good idea to split data into individual variables.