Import Text Data into MATLAB

Use the following functions to import text data into MATLAB^®. Usually, the easiest way to import text data into MATLAB is to use the extractFileText function. For example, to import text from a text file, use:

str = extractFileText('sonnets.txt');

This table outlines which function to use for different file types. For more information, see Extract Text Data from Files.

Source	Function	Example
Text, Microsoft^® Word, PDF, and HTML files	`extractFileText`	`str = extractFileText('sonnets.txt');`
CSV and Microsoft Excel^® files	`readtable`	`tbl = readtable('factoryReports.csv','TextType','string');`
HTML code	`extractHTMLText`	`str = extractHTMLText('<html><body><h1>THE SONNETS</h1><p>by William Shakespeare</p></body></html>');`
PDF forms	`readPDFFormData`	`data = readPDFFormData('weatherReportForm1.pdf');`

Import Text Data into MATLAB

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