Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Getting Input from a Text File.

Getting Input from a Text File

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 28, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


True to its BASIC roots, VBA allows you to do file input on sequential files. This means you can open and read a sequential text file, loading the information from the file into string variables. The steps are simple. You only have to open the file, get the input, and then close the file. The following code is a common example of reading from a sequential file:

Dim Raw As String
Dim NumValues As Integer, J As Integer
Dim UserVals() As String

Open "MyFile.Dat" For Input As #1
Line Input #1, Raw
NumValues = Val(Raw)
ReDim UserVals(NumValues)

For J = 1 to NumValues
    Line Input #1, UserVals(J)
Next J
Close #1

In this example you should note that the first line read from the text file (MyFile.Dat) is assumed to contain a value that indicates how many items are to be read in from the file.

Note:

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ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2227) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Getting Input from a Text File.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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