- length() is fragile: It uses to longer dimension. You cannot be sure if your table has more rows than columns. Use height() instead or size(data, 1) in older Matlab versions.
- readtable has 1 output only So what do you expect text to be?
[data text]= readtable(excelname);
- Your code replies the value of i as age, but the value of i comes from the last iteration of the loop:
age = i;
So age is always the number of rows of the table. But what are ii and jj good for?
I assume, you want:
function age = xls_ageofperson(excelname, name)
data = readtable(excelname);
age = data.age(data.name == name);
end
