Parse CSV, ignoring commas inside string literals in VBA?

Question

I have a VBA application that runs every day. It checks a folder where CSVs are downloaded automatically, and adds their contents to a database. When parsing them, I reali

Answer 1

I made another variant of solution for parsing CSV files with "quoted" text strings with possible delimiters, like comma inside the double quotes. This method doesn't require regex expressions, or any other addons. Also, this code deals with multiple commas in between the quotes. Here is Subroutine for testing:

Sub SubstituteBetweenQuotesSub()
'In-string character replacement function by Maryan Hutsul      1/29/2019
Dim quote, quoteTwo As Integer
Dim oddEven As Integer
Dim i, counter As Integer
Dim byteArray() As Byte

'LineItems are lines of text read from CSV file, or any other text string
LineItems = ",,,2019NoApocalypse.ditamap,jesus.christ@sky.com,Approver,""JC, ,Son"",Reviewer,god.allmighty@sky.com,""God, All-Mighty,"",2019-01-29T08:47:29.290-05:00"

quote = 1
oddEven = 0

Do Until quote = 0
quote = InStr(quote, LineItems, Chr(34))
quoteTwo = InStr(quote + 1, LineItems, Chr(34))

oddEven = oddEven + 1
    If oddEven Mod 2 = 1 And quote <> 0 Then

        counter = 0
        For i = quote To quoteTwo
            byteArray = StrConv(LineItems, vbFromUnicode)
            If i <> 0 Then
                If byteArray(i - 1) = 44 Then   '44 represents comma, can also do Chr(44)
                counter = counter + 1
                End If
            End If
        Next i

        LineItems = Left(LineItems, quote - 1) & Replace(LineItems, ",", ";", quote, counter)
        quote = quote + 1
    ElseIf quote <> 0 Then
        quote = quote + 1
    End If
Loop

End Sub

Here is function to which you can pass lines from .csv, .txt or any other text files:

Function SubstituteBetweenQuotes(LineItems)
'In-string character replacement function by Maryan Hutsul                                          1/29/2019
'LineItems are lines of text read from CSV file, or any other text string
Dim quote, quoteTwo As Integer
Dim oddEven As Integer
Dim i, counter As Integer
Dim byteArray() As Byte


quote = 1
oddEven = 0

Do Until quote = 0
quote = InStr(quote, LineItems, Chr(34))
quoteTwo = InStr(quote + 1, LineItems, Chr(34))

oddEven = oddEven + 1
    If oddEven Mod 2 = 1 And quote <> 0 Then

        counter = 0
        For i = quote To quoteTwo
            byteArray = StrConv(LineItems, vbFromUnicode)
            If i <> 0 Then
                If byteArray(i - 1) = 44 Then   '44 represents "," comma, can also do Chr(44)
                counter = counter + 1
                End If
            End If
        Next i

        LineItems = Left(LineItems, quote - 1) & Replace(LineItems, ",", ";", quote, counter)
        quote = quote + 1
    ElseIf quote <> 0 Then
        quote = quote + 1
    End If
Loop

SubstituteBetweenQuotes = LineItems

End Function

And below is code for reading CSV file with function used:

Dim fullFilePath As String
Dim i As Integer

'fullFilePath - full link to your input CSV file
Open fullFilePath For Input As #1
row_number = 0
column_number = 0
'EOF - End Of File  (1) - file #1
Do Until EOF(1)
    Line Input #1, LineFromFile
            LineItems = Split(SubstituteBetweenQuotes(LineFromFile), ",")
    For i = LBound(LineItems) To UBound(LineItems)
    ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, i).Value = LineItems(i)
    Next i
    row_number = row_number + 1
Loop
Close #1

All delimiters and replacement character may be modified for your needs. I Hope this is useful as I had quite a journey to solve some problems with CSV imports