# ddereq

## Purpose

Request data from DDE server application.

## Syntax

    data = ddereq(channel,item,format,timeout)

## Arguments

`data`
  A matrix that contains the requested data, empty if the function call failed.
`channel`
  The channel assigned to the conversation, returned by `ddeinit`.
`item`
  A string that specifies the server application's DDE item name for the data requested.
`format`
  (optional) A two-element array that specifies the format of the data requested.
  The first element indicates a Windows clipboard format to use for the request. MATLAB supports only Text format, which corresponds to a value of 1.
  The second element of the format array specifies the type of the resultant matrix. The valid types are NUMERIC (the default, corresponding to a value of 0) and STRING (corresponding to a value of 1).
  The default format array is [1 0].
`timeout`
  (optional) A scalar that specifies the time-out limit for this operation. `timeout` is specified in milliseconds (1000 milliseconds = 1 second). The default `timeout` is three seconds.

## Description

`ddereq` requests data from a server application via an established DDE conversation. `ddereq` returns a matrix containing the requested data or an empty matrix if the function is unsuccessful.

## Example

    % Request a matrix of cells from Excel
    mymtx = ddereq(channel, 'r1c1:r10c10');

## See Also

    ddeexec, ddeinit, ddepoke, ddeterm, ddeunadv, ddeadv

(c) Copyright 1994 by The MathWorks, Inc.