File access with VBA

Visual Basic for Applications provides functions for performing file input/output (I/O). This lets your custom solutions create, edit and store large amounts of data. You can also access several datasets at the same time and share data with other applications. There are three types of file access in VBA:

Sequential, used with textfiles
Random Access, used with files containing a series of fixed length records.
Binary, used with files with no general format, this requires that you have exact knowledge on how the data is stored in the file in order to retrieve any information.

File access functions in VBA

Function	Action	Sequential Access	Random Access	Binary Access
FreeFile	Returns the next available file number, used with the Open statement.	X	X	X
Open	Opens a file with a specified access type	X	X	X
Close	Closes an open file	X	X	X
Print #	Writes display-formatted data to a sequential file.	X
Write #	Writes data to a file opened for sequential access	X
Line Input #	Reads an entire line of text into a single variable	X
Input #	Reads a line of text into one or more variables	X
Input$	Returns all characters (bytes) from an open file	X
EOF	Tests if the current read or write position is at the end of the open file	X	X	X
LOF	Returns the file size in bytes for an open file	X	X	X
Seek	Returns the next read/write position within an open file	X	X	X
Loc	Returns the current read/write position within an open file.	X	X	X
Put	Writes data to a file at a specific record number		X	X
Get	Reads data from an open file at a specific record number		X	X

Document last updated 1999-12-17 12:48:50 Printerfriendly version