Importing large files to double with a "." as a missing value

I have many large files in excel . I am using the excel import function but the issue is that it shows all columns as cell columns because whenever there is a missing value the cell has a dot "." instead of nan or empty cell. Changing them manually is very tedious. Is there a way to force matlab to import all columns as vector columns while replacing the "." with a nan value?

[KSSV]

Have you tried

[num,txt,raw] = xlsread('myfile.xlsx')

[Star Strider]

It would be much easier to give you a specific solution if we had your file (or a representative part of it) to work with.

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Nowadays, there's hardly any reason to use xlsread when readtable can also read excel files and is a lot more powerful.

In your particular case:

mytable = readtable('yourexcelfile.xlsx', 'TreatAsEmpty', '.')

will replace all the '.' by NaN.

edit: fixed typo

[Danielle Leblance]

I am receiving Invalid parameter name: TreastAsEmpty.

[Guillaume]

That was a typo, the parameter was 'TreatAsEmpty'. Note that I did link the doc, so you could just have looked it up.

[Danielle Leblance]

thanks . i didn't notice the typo.

Answer 2

[Danielle Leblance]

attached the file. the number of rows in the real file is large