Converting a table of mixed numeric-string content to an array

I have a table with mixed numeric&string content:

M = 

    rep           file           condition    corrAns
    ___    __________________    _________    _______

    1      'stimuli/03C1.wav'    'C1'         2      
    1      'stimuli/03C4.wav'    'C4'         1 
......................

I'd like to convert M to an array, so as to be able to save it as a spreadsheet using xlswrite, which requires an array as input.

However, the command

 table2array(M)

gives the error

 Cannot concatenate the table variables 'rep' and 'file', because their types are double and cell.

I tried converting the first and final columns from double to cell using

 M(:,1) = table2cell(M(:,1))

or even

	for i_row=1:row_N
		M(i_row,1) = num2cell(M(i_row,1));
		M(i_row,4) = num2cell(M(i_row,4));
	end

but both of these conversions lead to the same error. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Change non-cells to cells and then convert.

M.rep = num2cell(M.rep);
M.corrAns = num2cell(M.corrAns); 

table2array(M)

[z8080]

Thank you Adam!

[Adam Danz]

Glad I could help!

Answer 2

[Steven Lord]

I recommend using writetable instead of using xlswrite. You can tell writetable to write to a spreadsheet file.

[Peter Perkins]

What Steve said. writetable is a much better choice.

It also looks like Condition could usefully be converted to categorical, depending on what you're doing with it.