There is a function for finding maximums, max(), which finds the maximum value of a specified region. All you need to do is index the function to see each column and then run a for loop.
for k = 1:size(filelist); % Run through each file
for j = 1:size(filedata,2); % Run through each column of a given file
datamaxes(k,j) = max(filedata(:,j)); % Find max of column and store data
end
end
for j = 1:size(datamaxes,2); % Run through each column again for maximax value
maximax(j) = max(datamaxes(:,j)); % Find max value of given column for all files
end
