title: Reading Excel files and creating an array in MATLAB
body: <p>I have software where coordinates are exported to an xls file, I now want to create a function within MATLAB which uses this xls file but do not wish to change the original software (therefore the xls file will have to remain in the same format). </p>
  
  <p>I am currently using the code </p>
  
  <pre><code>FILE = 'KEN FILE2.xls';
  [NUM,TXT,RAW]=xlsread(FILE);
  xArray = cell2mat(RAW(:,1))
  yArray = cell2mat(RAW(:,2))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which is not good enough as my excel file is like the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code> 1     2
   2     2.1
   3     2.2  
   4     2.3
  
  
   Value of ken 
   27
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Because of the text in column A the code falls over, I can obviously manually edit the excel file so that my above code works but I would rather have a code that handles this.</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas?</p>