All Zeros Returned When Reading an Excel File in LabVIEW

Issue Details

I'm using the Read From Spreadsheet File VI to read data from an Excel file, but it always returns zeros to the array. How can I get my data out of the spreadsheet?

Solution

The LabVIEW VI 'Read From Spreadsheet File VI' does not directly read .xls files, but rather delimited text files.

If you created your Excel spreadsheet by manually entering in the data (not using LabVIEW and the Write to Spreadsheet File VI) the Read From Spreadsheet File VI will not properly interpret your .xls file and will return zeros into your array. In order to get this data into an array in LabVIEW you will have to save the Excel file as a tab delimited text file. This can be done in Excel by:
 

1. selecting File»Save As.
2. Then select Text as the Save As Type.
3. Now inputting this new .txt file into the file path node of the Read From Spreadsheet File VI will populate your array with the proper data.

If you just need the first column of data, you can wire a True constant to the Transpose? node, and the First Row output will give you an array with the values of your first column of data.

 

Additional Information

LabVIEW 2015 and older versions have replaced the Read From Spreadsheet File VI with Read Delimited Spreadsheet VI.