How to get xlsread, xlswrite, actxserver to find, read and write to/from Excel 2010?

Matlab newbie. Lots of questions around about why Matlab no longer talks to Excel 2010 - but no satisfactory answers as to how to fix it. These are the errors, refer to the screenshot below

• xlswrite: 'Warning: Could not start Excel server for export.'
• xlsread: 'Warning: Could not start Excel server for import, 'basic' mode will be used.'
• actxserver: 'Server creation failed. Invalid ProgID 'Excel.Application'.'
• If I type 'actxcontrollist' I do not see any references to Excel or Spreadsheet.

OCTAVE on the other hand is able to read and write to Excel 2010 with no problems using its xlsread and xlswrite commands, so it would seem that something within Matlab is not doing its job. What do I have to do to setup Matlab so that it will talk to Excel?

This is a major issue as in my case it negates the reason for which it was purchased. Any help solving it would be highly appreciated.

Setup: Win7 (64bit), Matlab2014b (64 bit), Office Home 2010 Italian (32 bit)

Answer 1

[Ken Atwell]

Could you be running a so-called "click to run" version of Office ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982431 )? That version did not export the Active-X hooks MATLAB needs, see this topic for options.

[Jack]

Ken you are a genius, a GENIUS I tell you.

It turns out that I was running a version of click-to-run Office which came with my computer when I bought it and that was the issue. For all of you lost folks with this problem this is the way I solved it:

1. Uninstall the version of (click to run) Office 2010 H&S - this caused me a couple of hours worth of grief
2. Install it again from disk (I tried downloading it from the site as suggested in the first link above but that version kept aborting the install - this caused me an additional couple of hours worth of grief until I gave up and used another licence I had the disk for).

Typing actxcontrollist in Matlab now shows a couple of handles that I think were not there before, 'MWSAMP.MwsampCtrl.1' and 'MWSAMP.MwsampCtrl.2'. I think.

It now works beautifully, thank you!