Cause of the Issue As of MATLAB R2025b, "convertContainedStringsToChars" does not recursively process tables. It only converts strings inside cells or struct fields and leaves tables unchanged. This is documented behaviour. Workaround Use the "convertvars" function to convert table variables between supported types. For example, to convert string variables in a table to cell arrays of character vectors: >> expected_output = table({'one'; 'two'}) >> string_table = table(["one"; "two"]) >> char_table = convertvars(string_table, vartype("string"), 'cellstr') For additional information, please refer to the documentation page on the "covertvars" function.

"Which is preferred and why?" In my opinion character arrays and string arrays have quite different applications, even though people often seem to treat them as being interchangeable. In a nutshell, I would decide which one to use based on these paradigms: string array: use when you want to consider each string element as an atomic unit (of course it is possible to dig into the string and mess around with its individual characters, but that is not their raison d'être). For example, strings allow for arrays with identical sizes to corresponding numeric arrays (e.g. simpler assigning of function outputs in a for-loop). The various special methods (e.g. compose, etc.) are sometimes very convenient but not particularly efficient. character array: use when you need to work with individual characters, e.g. compression, encoding/decoding, or when you need to write very efficient code. With character arrays you can use standard MATLAB indexing and arithmetic operations etc. to work with individual character codes. There is no way to beat this in terms of speed or memory.

You could use s = 'Potato'; t = num2cell(s) t = 1×6 cell array {'P'} {'o'} {'t'} {'a'} {'t'} {'o'}

string(data)

Character arrays are, as the name suggests, arrays of characters. So the length of your variable a is 14 elements. Indexing this array will return characters, so a(4) will return the character 'm'. String arrays are different because each element is a whole string. The length of your variable b is 1, and you can only index that string with b(1) . If you want the characters out of the string, you can get the character array with b{1} and then add the character index. So b{1}(4) will return the same character 'm'.

Use the following function: http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/cellstr.html

>> B =  cellstr(A)

B = 

    'APR'
    'MAY'

>> B{1}

ans =

APR

S = struct('code',{'CO128','TX457'}); S.code % checking tmp = num2cell(string({S.code})); [S.code] = tmp{:}; S.code % checking