Reading a 97-2003 xls file

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C
C on 12 Jul 2019
Answered: Sohel Rana on 9 Dec 2021
How can I read a 97-2003 xls file into matlab. It gives me the error "not in Microsoft Excel Format"
If I resave the file as a newer verson I can read that but I have thousands of files I need to read and I can't go through manually changing each one.
Thank you.
  7 Comments
Ayushman Tripathi
Ayushman Tripathi on 12 Aug 2020
Edited: Ayushman Tripathi on 12 Aug 2020
I was facing the same issue("not in Microsoft Excel Format") as you were while reading .xls file (1997-2003 Excel)
I came across the following link which helped resolve the issue .
In short, you can use the dlmread OR readmatrix command on MATLAB. It worked for me.
Rik
Rik on 12 Aug 2020
Judging by the description there I wouldn't say it is actually an Excel file, so the error is correct. A tab delimited file is not an xls.

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Answers (2)

Rik
Rik on 15 Jul 2019
Sometimes it helps to provide the full file name including the extension. That way Matlab doesn't have to determine the file type on its own.
  1 Comment
dpb
dpb on 15 Jul 2019
+1 I missed that detail and would definitely never pass an unqualified name w/o extension to xlsread. In fact, I'd expect it to fail with "file not found" and think opening a file that could possibly be different than the one passed by name verging on the edge of being a bug.

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Sohel Rana
Sohel Rana on 9 Dec 2021
You could use file extension.
Use xlsread ('filename.xls') instead of xlsread ('filename.xlsx') for 97-2003 xls file.
It worked for me.

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