Function requires a Toolbox for which you do not have a license

Up until today, I have been using my scripts without any issues. These scripts rely on a number of functions associated with certain toolboxes (for example, the tdfread function, which belongs to the Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox). However, all of a sudden, MATLAB no longer allows me to run these scripts, as it tells me I do not have access to these functions.

It seems the reason is that I do not have a license for these toolboxes. Still, I have been able to use them without any problem until now, and my account is linked to an academic institution that supposedly has licenses for all of these toolboxes.

Could you please tell me what might be happening?

[Mathieu NOE]

maybe a question for your IT manager....

[Torsten]

You can check if a licence is available by using e.g.

license ('test','Statistics_Toolbox')

ans = 1

for the Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox. Result should be "1" like above.

[ALICIA]

I check the license of different Toolboxes that failed in my scripts but, aprently, they are available:

>> license ('test','Statistics_Toolbox')
ans = 1

[Torsten]

Are you sure about the name of the folder ? "path" usually is a placeholder where you have to insert the actual name of the path starting with a letter for the drive (e.g. C:\ ) (absolute pathname) :

mygenes = tdfread('/path/Gene_list.txt', "\t");

Try what happens if you copy the .txt file to your actual working directory and use

mygenes = tdfread('Gene_list.txt','\t');

If this doesn't work either, you should contact the IT Department of the institution your account is linked to.

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

If you could use it in the past, then you had a license for that toolbox. You cannot use a function from a toolbox where you lack a license for that toolbox. Since that has now apparently changed, you need to talk to the source for your copy of MATLAB, which will be the school providing you the license. Talk to your local MATLAB administrator. Only they can answer your question, and hopefully fix the problem.

[Steven Lord]

My suspicion, since I think some colleges and universities are starting classes, is that the school has a pool of licenses for Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox but that all of them were in use (by students starting working on their assignments) when the poster tried to check one out. The license administrators ought to be able to check how many licenses are available to determine if this is the case.

[Torsten]

@Steven Lord

What's the message users get in this case ? "All licences are in use" ? Or is it in the responsibility of the licence administrators to deal with this error handling ?

[Steven Lord]

I'm not sure what the message is. While I did get trained on answering license management questions when I started at MathWorks, that was 24 years ago so 1) I don't remember a lot of the details and 2) the details have almost certainly changed since then.

[John D'Errico]

We used to see this happen, long ago when I was in an area with shared licenses. But as you say, it tells you that all licenses are in use. Here, @ALICIA has said MATLAB says they do not have access. So the question is, what error message was generated?

For example, I don't have the global optimization TB on my license. So if I try to use ga there, this call will generate an error:

f = @(x) x;
ga(f)
ga requires Global Optimization Toolbox.

So is @ALICIA seeing an error stating no license is available from the license pool, or is it an error that states an attempt was made to use a toolbox they do not have a license for at all?

[ALICIA]

The error reported looks like your example:

mygenes = tdfread('/path/Gene_list.txt', "\t");
tdfread requires Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox.