how to import an excel or txt file with multiple columns of 'strings'

I have an excel file with 347 rows and 5 columns of strings. Each string in a cell has single quotes around it. For example:

'FS-SW 7/27'     'frogstool'    'fs3'    'center'    'recon'

'FS3-10'  'frogstool'  'fs3'  'center'  'recon'

'FS3-26'  'frogstool'  'fs3'  'center'  'recon'

'PUN-SW 7/27'  'pungos'  'pun1'  'center'  'recon'

'PUN1-10'  'pungos'  'pun1'  'center'  'recon'

'PUN1-23'  'pungos'  'pun1'  'center'  'recon'

How do I load this into Matlab as a cell array ideally? I need the data to be entered in the same matrix dimensions, (347,5). I am going to horizontally concatenate it with a numeric array into a dataset eventually.

Thanks in advance!

-1waytimemachine

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Possibly

[num, txt] = xlsread('YourFile.xls');

Then txt should be the cell array.

[George McFadden]

> Walter, xlsread worked, thank you! I used [txt,raw] = xlsread...

The text variable contains nothing, but the raw contains the data. Load, and import data were not working for me. Thanks again.

[Walter Roberson]

Selection of output is positional, not by variable name. The first output of xlsread() is always the numeric array, even when no understandable numbers were found.