title: read a tab delimited txt file into matlab
body: <p>I am trying to read a <strong>tab delimited txt file in MatLab</strong>.
  The file has columns composed of numbers, text, dates, datetimes, everything you can think of. Some of the columns have very long sentences in them, with commas and everything.</p>
  
  <p>it exceeds the row limit of excel (i have about 1.5 million rows) so I can not convert it to a CSV or an XLSX file.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>tableDataEDM = tdfread(pathDataEDM,'\t');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get back 'need the statistics and machine learning toolbox'
  I dont have it</p>
  
  <pre><code>tableDataEDM = dlmread(pathDataEDM,'\t');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Mismatch between file and format character vector.
  I get back 'Trouble reading 'Numeric' field from file'</p>
  
  <p>this is because the file has text and numbers and dates and everything else. dlmread likes numeric data i guess</p>
  
  <pre><code>       tableDataEDM = readtable(pathDataEDM,'Delimiter','\t','ReadVariableNames',true);
  
  I get back:
      Error using readtable (line 197)
      Reading failed at line 6. All lines of a text file must have the same number of delimiters. Line 6 has 10
      delimiters, while preceding lines have 32.
  
      Note: readtable detected the following parameters:
      'HeaderLines', 0, 'Format', '%q%q%q%q%D%D%D%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%D%D%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q%q'
  
      Error in Edm_FinderComp_CrossOver (line 33)
      tableDataEDM = readtable(pathDataEDM,'Delimiter','\t','ReadVariableNames',false);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am not sure why it says this though. I can import this data into python very easily. Is there something I am missing to try and get this into matlab?</p>
  
  <p>any help on import tab delimited txt files is appreciated. I have not tried text scan because it looks painful.</p>