As stated in our documentation: The full functionality of XLSREAD
depends on the ability to start Excel as a COM server from MATLAB.
If your system does not have this capability (as on a non-Windows
platform such as a Mac or Linux machine), the XLSREAD syntax that
passes the 'basic' keyword is recommended. As long as the COM
server is available, you can use XLSREAD on Excel files having
formats other than XLS (for example, HTML).
Unfortunately, due to the evolving nature of Microsoft Excel file
formats, it is difficult to have the 'basic' mode (which invokes
the private function BIFFPARSE) support all possible Excel formats.
Therefore, this mode has some fundamental limitations.
In order to work around this issue, save all errant XLS-files in
Microsoft Excel 95 format. This ensures that all unsupported
formatting is eliminated from the file, thus rendering it readable
by the XLSREAD function in 'basic' mode.