Reading cell array from excel table, which contains different sizes of doubles

I would like to read these columns as cell arrays, where the components are doubles, such as the following:

m_con = {[1,2,3],2,3};

I have tried xlsread but it didn't work.

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

There might be a smoother method but this works with the data from your image.

file = 'Book1.xlsx';
opts = detectImportOptions(file);
opts = setvartype(opts, 'char');  
C = readcell(file,opts);   % you can also try readtable()
numIdx = cellfun(@isnumeric,C); 
C(numIdx) = cellfun(@num2str,C(numIdx),'UniformOutput',false);
Cnum = cellfun(@str2num,C,'UniformOutput',false)

Cnum =

3×4 cell array

{1×3 double} {1×3 double} {[ 1]} {[ 1]}

{[ 2]} {[ 2]} {1×2 double} {1×2 double}

{[ 3]} {[ 2]} {1×2 double} {1×2 double}

Cnum{1,1}

ans =

1 2 3

[Ege Arsan]

Thank you so much!

[Ege Arsan]

By the way, when i try to import from a spreadsheet C returns as 3x3. Do you know where the problem could be?

C = readcell(filename,'Sheet','Table2',opts);

[Ege Arsan]

I meant like this

C = readcell(filename,opts,'Sheet','Tabelle2');

[Adam Danz]

I would need the file to investigate.

[Ege Arsan]

I have figured that problem but came up with a new one. I have the following table from another file and i guess bucause of the empty spaces in the table i get an error like this: Error using str2num (line 35) Input must be a character vector or string scalar.

Is there a way to ignore the empty spaces and have the first two as 2x1 arrays?

[Adam Danz]

This line from my answer identifies cell elements that are already numeric and is used to copy those values to the output cell array.

numIdx = cellfun(@isnumeric,C); 

You can add an additional line that search for character vectors.

charIdx = cellfun(@ischar,C); 
Cnum(charIdx) = cellfun(@str2num,C(charIdx),'UniformOutput',false)

*not tested

[Ege Arsan]

It works! Thank you so much for your help!

[Ege Arsan]

I have one last quastion. I tried to combine these two with an if condition but i still get en error. Do you know a better expression or is it completely false waht i did?

if ~isnumeric(C)

numIdx = cellfun(@isnumeric,C);

C(numIdx) = cellfun(@num2str,C(numIdx),'UniformOutput',false);

Cnum = cellfun(@str2num,C,'UniformOutput',false);

elseif ~ischar(C)

charIdx = cellfun(@ischar,C);

Cnum(charIdx) = cellfun(@str2num,C(charIdx),'UniformOutput',false);

end