Save a range as text using VBA [tutorial]

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Last night I asked members of our Chandoo.org facebook page to share an Excel problem you are struggling with.  Francis asked,

How to save a file as .txt in vba without quotes? When I save as .txt, the file has got quotes inside of it. I used the code Print, but it didnt work because the file loses its delimitation.
Does anyone know how to solve this?

Let’s understand how to save a range as text and overcome the double quote problem.

Saving a range as Text – the easy way

Say you have a file like this:

save-range-as-text-vba-data

The easy option is to save your worksheet as text file using below macro.



Sub saveText()
    ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs filename:= _
        ThisWorkBook.Path & "textfile-" & Format(Now, "ddmmyy-hhmmss") & ".txt", FileFormat:=xlText, _
        CreateBackup:=False
End Sub

While this works, it has 2 problems.

  1. It exports the entire current worksheet.
  2. It adds double quotes “” to text values or formatted cells.

So you get this.

save-as-text-quotation-marks

Saving a range as Text – the proper way

We can create a blank text file using VBA and write the range data values in to that file. This way we will have full control over what goes in to the file and how it’s formatted.

Here is the code:


Sub saveText2()
    Dim filename As String, lineText As String
    Dim myrng As Range, i, j
    
    filename = ThisWorkbook.Path & "textfile-" & Format(Now, "ddmmyy-hhmmss") & ".txt"
    
    Open filename For Output As #1
    
    Set myrng = Range("data")
    
    For i = 1 To myrng.Rows.Count
        For j = 1 To myrng.Columns.Count
            lineText = IIf(j = 1, "", lineText & ",") & myrng.Cells(i, j)
        Next j
        Print #1, lineText
    Next i
    
    Close #1
End Sub

Let’s understand the code…

Create a file name

We take the current workbook path and set up textfile-time stamp.txt in that directory.

Note, the time stamp portion is dynamic and changes every time you run the code.

We then open the file using Open filename For Output As #1 line.

This sets up a new file and opens it for us to write anything we want.

Loop thru range data and write values to the file

We loop thru each and every cell of the range("data"). We need to take all the values in a row and concatenate them with delimiter comma (,).

This is done in nested for loops (related: Introduction to For loop- Excel VBA)

We loop thru each column in a row and construct lineText.

We then print this lineText to file #1 using,

Print #1, lineText

Finally we close the file.

The end result

This is what we get.

save-as-text-final

Download Save Text example macro

Click here to download the example workbook. Examine the savetext macro to learn more.

How do you create text files using VBA?

Do you create text / CSV / TSV files from Excel data? How do you automate the process? Please share your tips and ideas in the comments section.

Learn more powerful ways to use VBA: