(i) The easiest way to read an excel file in matlab is with readtable. You can specify the column names of the table after creation
t = readtable('someexcelfile.xlsx', 'ReadVariableNames', false);
t.Properties.VariableNames = {'nameofcol1', 'nameofcol2', 'etc.'};
(ii) You can vertically concatenate tables. Store them all in a cell array as you read them, then:
mergedtables = vertcat(cellarrayoftables{:});
is all that is needed.
path = 'C:\somewhere\on your drive';
filelist = dir(fullfile(path, '*.xlsx'));
filescontent = cell(size(filelist));
for fileidx = 1:numel(filelist)
filescontent{fileidx} = readtable(fullfile(path, filescontent(fileidx).name), 'ReadVariablenames', false);
end
mergedcontent = vertcat(filescontent{:});
mergedcontent.Properties.VariableNames = {'something', 'somethingelse', 'etc.'};
Alternatively, use a datastore which may make this even simpler (I'm not familiar enough with it to say).
