csvwrite formatting (strings & overwriting) problems, Matlab

Question

I had two arrays, (data1 is a header array of strings and data2 is the data array of numbers)

data1 = {'#','Area','C Xp','C Yp','Length','B #','R','L','Ch','E1 Xp','E1 Yp','E2 Xp','E2 Yp'};
data2 = [1   939  -397   586   99  2  2  0  -1  -450   588  -352   572
         2  1185  -287   294  145  2  1  1   0  -317   359  -235   244
         3   592  -242   486   77  3  2  1   0  -278   488  -202   477
         4   818  -144   480   60  2  0  2   1  -181   488  -135   451
         5   377   -23  -443   37  1  0  1   0   -42  -459   -12  -460
         6   923    32  -234   67  1  0  0   0    -3  -260    60  -212
         7   812   150  -148   54  1  0  1   0   136  -130   169  -161
         8  5968   428   432  402  3  3  0  -1   224   468   622   356
         9   617   714    13   63  1  0  1   0   687    35   702   -22

csvwrite('file.xlsx', data1, 0, 0);
csvwrite('file.xlsx', data2, 0, 1);

My first problem is data1 prints to the spreadsheet as an array of chars (example: '#','A','r','e','... each in their own cells). How do I get it to print as the strings I am passing?

My second problem is when I csvwrite data2, data1's info is erased or overwritten. How can I write both to the same file?

Answer 1

Hidden away in the Tips section of the csvwrite documentation:

csvwrite does not accept cell arrays for the input matrix M. To export a cell array that contains only numeric data, use cell2mat to convert the cell array to a numeric matrix before calling csvwrite. To export cell arrays with mixed alphabetic and numeric data, where each cell contains a single element, you can create an Excel® spreadsheet (if your system has Excel installed) using xlswrite. For all other cases, you must use low-level export functions to write your data. For more information, see Export Cell Array to Text File in the MATLAB® Data Import and Export documentation.

I'd say, use xlswrite.

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If you can't use xlswrite, it looks like you are stuck doing it manually as described on the page, Export Cell Array to Text File. Something along the lines of:

% write headers
fid = fopen('test.csv','w');
fprintf(fid,'%s,',data1{:});
fprintf(fid,'\n');

% write data...
fprintf(fid,[repmat('%d,',1,numel(data1)) '\n'],data2);
fclose(fid)