You have a couple options. If you just want to find the row for Mary, you can use option 1. If you specifically want an if/else statement, you can loop through each row and output the info using option 2.
% read in the data
[~, exceldata] = xlsread('excel-file.xlsx');
% Option 1: find the relevant index for Mary
idx= find(strcmp(exceldata(:,1), 'Mary'));
fprintf('%s, Major: %s, Course: %s\n', exceldata{idx, 1:3});
% Option 2: using a loop
for i=1:size(exceldata,1),
if strcmp(exceldata{i,1}, 'Mary'),
fprintf('%s, Major: %s, Course: %s\n', exceldata{i, 1:3});
else
fprintf('no data\n');
end
end
