Opening semicolon delimited CSV file

Question

How does one open a semicolon delimited CSV file with VBA in Excel 2000?

Sample data

An ID;TEST20090222
A Name;Firstname Surname
A D         


        

Answer 1

One more workaround - just rename .csv files to .txt and use OpenText method.

Answer 2

Re Any ideas?

If you want to fix a file for others using excel add this on the first line of the file without the quotes followed by a linebreak: "sep=;”

An easy way to manually open stupid files is to rename the extension to .txt or .htm then from excel use File - Open.

From VBA I recommend looking up the method in MSDN and manually specifying every parameter, my experience was that this eliminated most regional issues.

Answer 3

[Update 22.02.2009]

In the meantime, I solved the problem by writing an import function myself instead of using Workbooks.OpenText.

I just open the CSV file as a text file, read line by line, split each line into the semicolon separated elements and write each element into a cell.

Sub ImportCSVFile(filepath As String)
    Dim line As String
    Dim arrayOfElements
    Dim linenumber As Integer
    Dim elementnumber As Integer
    Dim element As Variant

    linenumber = 0
    elementnumber = 0

    Open filepath For Input As #1 ' Open file for input
        Do While Not EOF(1) ' Loop until end of file
            linenumber = linenumber + 1
            Line Input #1, line
            arrayOfElements = Split(line, ";")

            elementnumber = 0
            For Each element In arrayOfElements
                elementnumber = elementnumber + 1
                Cells(linenumber, elementnumber).Value = element
            Next
        Loop
    Close #1 ' Close file.
End Sub

Got the inspiration from Shasur: http://vbadud.blogspot.com/2007/06/vba-read-text-files-with-leading.html

I still do not know why Workbooks.OpenText does not work on my system even though it seems to work on user Remou's system. I guess it might have something to do with the operating system language (English) and the regional and language settings (German, Switzerland), but I am not sure.

Anyway, the workaround works for me. Thank you all for you suggestions and help!

Answer 4

I prefer:

Workbooks.Open fileName:=myFilename, UpdateLinks:=False, Local:=True

Answer 5

often the comma is ticked for true as a separator where it is usually the decimal separator. Add DecimalSeparator:="," and Bob's your uncle

Answer 6

Not sure, but you can try recording a macro to do the same thing and check the VBA code it produces. You might get a hint there as to what's missing.