How to Plot a Date on the X Axis using xlsread?

I've read in an excel file using:

>>[num,txt,raw] = xlsread(FilePath, sheet, range);

having my code in previous steps specify the FilePath, sheet, and range; they read in to the "raw" array exactly as I want them to.

What I want to do is plot a few of the "columns" from the raw array. Specifically, I want the first column to be the x-axis, with 3 other columns as lines in the y-axis. But I want the x-axis to be in some sort or date format- preferably MM-YYYY. When I plot it by using the plot toolbar on the top of the Matlab program, it gives me this code:

>> plot(cell2mat(raw(:,[17,19,end])),'DisplayName','cell2mat(raw(:,[17,19,end]))')

which plots the data exactly as I want it to, but the x-axis is not the date- it's just a number from 1-365 (I guess just the row number).

Any help or advice with this?

Answer 1

[dpb]

Select the column that contains the date and convert to Matlab datenum. Then use datetick to format the x-axis in time units desired.

See

doc datenum
doc datetick

and links under Excel importing for converting Excel dates to Matlab datenums if they're serial dates instead of character strings.

[Erin]

Worked great thank you!