xslread is limited to reading a contiguous, rectangular area so if your values from the list aren't in such a pattern, "no can do" without additional effort. (It would seem superficially by reading the documentation that a named area selection would work, but on trying it in the past have discovered that while Matlab doesn't throw an error, all one gets if the area isn't contiguous is the UL-most corner of the region, not the whole thing.)
Generally, in Matlab if you must use Excel you'll be better off to just read a whole sheet and do whatever subsetting you need in memory. Otherwise, options are to create an export file format more amenable to data transport or use direct ActiveX/COM interfacing which turns into more of an Excel syntax question than Matlab after open the connection.
