Hi Samer In general, xlsread(xlswrite) is a good idea ONLY if you are doing a once-off read (write) from a file. If you are doing multiple actions (reads/writes) I strongly suggest not using these function as there is massive amounts of overhead associcated with the re-instantiation of the excel application object with each function call. Instead use the Activex object directly and capture the data by invoking the VBA-type properties and methods of the excel COM Object. You can adapt the code below to get started (and simply google "Matlab activex COM" for more sample code).
To answer your question specifically, use the "Value2" property of the Range object (you'll find this below)
xlApp = actxserver('Excel.Application');
xlApp.Visible = 1;
xlWorkbook = xlApp.workbooks.Open(fullfile(xlFilePath,xlFileName),0,true);
xlSheets = xlWorkbook.Sheets;
xlSheetNamesArray = cell(xlSheets.Count,1);
for i = 1:xlSheets.Count
xlSheetNamesArray{i} = xlSheets.Item(i).Name; % sheet-order is not guaranteed so must build array
end
[~,idx] = ismember('Price',xlSheetNamesArray);
xlSheets.Item(idx).Activate
xlActiveSheet = xlWorkbook.ActiveSheet;
xlCurrRange = xlActiveSheet.Range('C4:C33');
priceVector = xlCurrRange.Value2;
priceVector = cell2mat(priceVector);
[~,idx] = ismember('Portfolios',xlSheetNamesArray);
xlSheets.Item(idx).Activate
xlActiveSheet = xlWorkbook.ActiveSheet;
xlCurrRange = xlActiveSheet.Range('B4:B22');
isinVector = xlCurrRange.Value2;
xlCurrRange = xlActiveSheet.Range('C3:G3');
ptfNumVector = cell2mat(xlCurrRange.Value2)';
xlCurrRange = xlActiveSheet.Range('C4:G22');
dataMatrix = xlCurrRange.Value2;
isnanMatrixMask = strcmp(dataMatrix,'ActiveX VT_ERROR: '); % handle missing data - assume as no position
dataMatrix(isnanMatrixMask) = {0};
dataMatrix = cell2mat(dataMatrix);
