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2001 - How Can I Use MATLAB as an ActiveX Server from Excel?

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This example shows how to create a small macro in Excel that gets data from MATLAB via ActiveX. It should work for MATLAB 5.2 (R10) and later and Excel 97 and later. For more information, please see the Microsoft Developer Network site at msdn.microsoft.com.

Excel 97 (and later) Example

1. Start Excel.
2. Go to the Tools menu of Excel and select Macro-->Macros. A dialog box will appear.
3. Enter Example1 in the Macro Name box, and click on Create. A Visual Basic editor will appear.

You are now ready to enter your macro. The following is an example of a macro that produces a mesh grid in MATLAB and returns the peaks matrix. The first and last lines of the macro should already appear in the sheet Module1.

	  '===============================================
	  ' Example1 Macro
	  ' Macro recorded 02/21/95 by The MathWorks, Inc.
	  '===============================================
    

	  ' Declare a Matlab variable here so it stays open
	  ' when Sub Example1 goes out of scope
	  Dim MatLab As Object


	  Sub Example1()
    

      	  'Create the Matlab Object
    	  Set MatLab = CreateObject("Matlab.Application")


    	  'Execute MATLAB commands
    	  Result = MatLab.Execute("h=peaks(10);colormap(pink);mesh(h);drawnow")
    

    	  'Get some matrix from MATLAB
    	  Dim MReal(9, 9) As Double
    	  Dim MImag() As Double
    	  Dim RealValue As Double
    	  Dim i, j As Integer
    	  'Result = MatLab.Execute("a = [1 2 3 4; 5 6 7 8;]")
    	  Call MatLab.GetFullMatrix("h", "base", MReal, MImag)
    

    	  'Make sheet1 active.  This selects the target sheet.
    	  'Commenting out this line means that the sheet
    	  'operated on is the current sheet.
    	  Sheets("sheet1").Select
    

    	  'Put in a string
    	  Range("B10:B10").Value = "The content of variable h"
    	  'Fill Excel sheet cells with data from MATLAB
    	  Range("B11:K20").Value = MReal


	End Sub
      

Once this macro is complete, save it and close out of the Visual Basic Editor. You can run the macro by opening the macros dialog box in Excel, selecting Example1, and clicking on Run

You can also download an example macro that has already been set up.