STRINGS FROM EXCEL TO MATLAB

IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAKE A STRING LIKE A DATE, JANUARY 2, 2011, AND ADD IT TO MATLAB? WHAT I AM TRYING TO DO IN A FOR LOOP, MY DATA CORRESPONDS TO DATES. SO MY FIRST FOR LOOP WOULD PLOT DATA FROM THE FIRST DATE FROM 0-23 HOURS AND WHEN I PLOT THIS IN THE FOR LOOP I WANT TO BE ABLE TO ADD THE DATE( FROM EXCEL) AS THE TITLE OF THAT PLOT. sO THE FIRST PLOT WOULD BE JANUARY 2 THEN NEXT JANUARY 3 AND SOO ON. SO FAR I HAVE

FOR i=1:364;
A=plot(a,X(:,i); % plots the first 24 data against the hour of day
xlabel('hour');ylabel(price); title('Date(1:i)')
hgsave(A,'plots')
end

i want to be able to come back to this figures later on without the use of matlab.

[per isakson]

All upper case is difficult to read!