I have Excel 2003 and 2010 installed, but xlsread fails to import a simple ".xlsx" file

Running / Installed Software: - Windows 7 Enterprise (64-bit) - MATLAB R2013a (win64) - Excel 2003 (32-bit) - Excel 2010 (32-bit)

I need to have both versions of Excel installed on my system for work, 2010 for new products and 2003 for some old legacy spreadsheets are still used for existing products.

I have two spreadsheets with the same contents, one is "book.xlsx" and the other is a "book.xls". Nothing fancy in there:

1
2
3

Here are the results of me xlsread on each:

>> xls = xlsread('book.xls')

xls =

             1
             2
             3

>> xlsx = xlsread('book.xlsx')
Error using xlsread (line 247)
File
C:\<path>\book.xlsx
not in Microsoft Excel Format.

My guess is that MATLAB is using Excel 2003 code for xlsread and that's why it cannot open the .xlsx file. But honestly I can't tell.

Is there an OS or MATLAB setting I could modify to allow xlsread to open .xlsx files?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Here's a snippet of mine you might want to look at:

% Prepare proper filename extension.
% Get the Excel version because if it's version 11 (Excel 2003) the file extension should be .xls,
% but if it's 12.0 (Excel 2007) then we'll need to use an extension of .xlsx to avoid nag messages.
excelVersion = str2double(Excel.Version);
if excelVersion < 12
  excelExtension = '.xls';
else
  excelExtension = '.xlsx';
end

% Determine the proper format to save the files in.  It depends on the extension (Excel version).
switch excelExtension
  case '.xls' %xlExcel8 or xlWorkbookNormal
     xlFormat = -4143;
  case '.xlsb' %xlExcel12
     xlFormat = 50;
  case '.xlsx' %xlOpenXMLWorkbook
     xlFormat = 51;
  case '.xlsm' %xlOpenXMLWorkbookMacroEnabled 
     xlFormat = 52;
  otherwise
     xlFormat = -4143;
end

Then, later....

  % Save this workbook we just created.
  ExcelWorkbook.SaveAs(fullFileName, xlFormat);