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Word VBA - read text file - accented characters

Word 2007 VBA

I am reading a text file using the code below and storing in a string variable. However accented characters are coming in different to what they should be.

What can I do?

TIA

I'll try to included example but may not render correctly

Telefónica -> TelefÃ³nica

Function GetText(sFile As String) As String
    Dim nSourceFile As Integer, sText As String
    Dim lngChars As Long

    ''Close any open text files
    Close
    
    ''Get the number of the next free text file
    nSourceFile = FreeFile
    
    ''Write the entire file to sText
    Open sFile For Input As #nSourceFile
    lngChars = LOF(nSourceFile)
    sText = Input(lngChars, nSourceFile)
   
    Close
    GetText = sText
    
End Function

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CreepyD

It may not be the ultimate solution, but this might work.
Here's something I did in vbscript, which I would assume would work for VBA as well.

Basically, read the file into a String as you are doing.
Then use the Replace() function, copying and pasting the incorrect characters into it, and replacing them with the correct accented characters.
Then I simply write the new String (including replaced characters) back to the file - Or you can do what ever with that string.

Remember this is vbscript, not VBA, but it should be almost identicle.

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
File = "C:\Users\gbeajmn_sa\Desktop\all.txt"
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(File, ForReading)

strText = objFile.ReadAll
objFile.Close
strNewText = Replace(strText, "Ã³", "ó") 'Replace with correct character here
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(File, ForWriting)
objFile.WriteLine strNewText
objFile.Close

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Andrew Crofts

ASKER

Thanks

Yeah, but it is a bit of a bodge. I don't know what all the translations should be. I really want a more robust and "proper" solution.

jmdion

Can you post a sample text file? It looks like the input may be 16-bit characters and the VBA code expects 8-bit characters.

Andrew Crofts

ASKER

Not in work til Thursday.

> It looks like the input may be 16-bit characters and the VBA code expects 8-bit characters.

If that is the case what would I do?

jmdion

Not sure what would work. I would try first functions like StrConv with the vbFromUnicode argument. Or other VBA functions that work on strings and that come up in a google search with "ANSI", "UTF", "UCS", "Unicode" or "encoding".

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GrahamSkan

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Helen Feddema

What is your ultimate goal here? In other words, after importing the text, where will it be used? The thing about text files is that they are just text -- there is little or no support for accented characters. If you are just reusing it somewhere else in Word, I would just copy a range and then paste it somewhere else, using the paste option that preserves formatting.

Andrew Crofts

ASKER

It is pasted as html into a content control of a word document.

The problem is that it is wrong as soon as I get it from the file.

I will try the opening as document suggestion tomorrow

Andrew Crofts

ASKER

Hi

The opening as a document seems to work, but

It gets garbled later on.

Not my code but what happens is we have a fragment of HTML and this is palced on the clipboards using windows functions

CopyMemory ByVal lpData, ByVal sData, Len(sData)
GlobalUnlock hMemHandle
EmptyClipboard
SetClipboardData m_cfHTMLClipFormat, hMemHandle

The fragment is in sData and is still correct. It is copied to memory then SetClipboardData puts it on the clipboard.

The clipboard contents are pasted to the content control using
Selection.PasteSpecial , , , , WdPasteDataType.wdPasteHTML

If I try to get the string onto the clipboard any other way so far I can't use the HTML paste format.

I'll have to post another question I guess, but that is where I am

Andrew Crofts

ASKER

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