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How to get readcell to read leading empty columns and rows in spreadsheet

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Say I have an Excel file with some entries, offset so that they start at B2 instead of A1 (see image below):
So column A is completely empty, and row 1 is completely empty.
Can I use readcell() so that it includes the empty leading columns and rows? I want to do this without specifying a full range (i.e., 'A1:J50') because I don't know how large my data is. I want MATLAB to find that out for me. If I do readcell(file,'Range','A1'), then it omits the leading row because it's empty, which is the issue I'm facing.

Accepted Answer

Dabeer Ahmad
Dabeer Ahmad on 5 Dec 2022
I figured out my issue. I was using 'Range' instead of 'DataRange.' Using
readcell(file,'DataRange','A1')
makes sure you read in starting from cell A1, even if there's leading missing rows and columns.

More Answers (1)

Arif Hoq
Arif Hoq on 30 Nov 2022
please refer to this answer:
You don't need to specify the range. readtable, readcell, readmatrix functions can export all your data from excel.
  1 Comment
Dabeer Ahmad
Dabeer Ahmad on 5 Dec 2022
I have a specific use case where it is easier for user to point to a piece of data by its cell location (i.e., 'B2'), but if I import the data using readcell() and there are empty leading rows or columns, then B2 might become item (1,1) in the cell array, which makes things complicated.
I know I can just
readcell(file,'Range','B2:B2')
in this case, but I would like to read in all the data first, then work with the matrix afterwards (that seems more efficient, especially because I'm extracting dozens of data points from a spreadsheet, and doing this for hundreds of sheets).
The link mentions you don't want to read in all empty cells, and I agree, but is there no way to just read in the leading empty rows and columns? Not the trailing ones?

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