Determining If a File Exists

Hello Dave,
Yes, as far as I know you’re right. – I have only seen it in the practice return a simple name. I don’t think there is any way to make it return a full path.
Actually what Dir seems to do is “return the thing it finds “There”” , where “There” is like in Dir(“There”). In other words what is at the Path you give it.
If you give it the full path and file name, as Allen Wyatt is suggesting, then all it can give you back is that one thing if it is there, which is your file. In other words, the only thing it finds at your file is your file
( I think Dir is a throw back to old computer stuff. I seem to remember that you typed Dir and something.. and then you got it back, or the path changed to it.. or something similar to that happened.. I don’t quite remember what… it was a long time ago..)
If Instead of giving Dir the full path and file name, I give it the full path like this,.._
Dir(ThisWorkbook.Path & "\")
Or this
Dir(“c:\”)
_.. , then it will return me any file from that path. (It will return the first file there, or maybe it goes by alphabetical order - I am not sure how it organises the order)
By the way, I just took a look at the documentation and I see that Dir( ) has a second argument. As Allen Wyatt is not using that, then it defaults to vbNormal , like this in my last example:
Dir(ThisWorkbook.Path & "\", vbNormal)
Dir(“c:\”, vbNormal)
If I do it slightly differently like these .._
Dir(ThisWorkbook.Path & "\", vbDirectory)
Dir(“c:\”, vbDirectory)
_.. then folders are also included in what it looks for
_.___________________________
In VBA I see Dir a lot in looping through files in a folder. That works nicely because of 2 characteristics of the VBA Dir
_1 The Dir takes a wild card in the first string argument in ( ) and returns initially the first thing that it finds that matches that search criteria.
_2 If you use just Dir on its own without the ( ) then it returns the next thing it finds that matches the last used search criteria

This code is like to find all Excel files

Sub Duh_XL()
Dim MeFiles As String, MeStrungOut As String
Let MeNextFile = Dir(ThisWorkbook.Path & "\*.xls*", vbNormal) ' Search criteria is all Excel files in the same folder as the workboook that this code is in
Do While MeNextFile <> "" '======
Let MeStrungOut = MeStrungOut & MeNextFile & vbCrLf
Let MeNextFile = Dir ' use of just Dir looks for next file which meets the last search criteria
Loop 'if MeNextFile <> "" '======
MsgBox prompt:="The found files were:" & vbCrLf & MeStrungOut: Debug.Print "The found files were:" & vbCrLf & MeStrungOut ' From XL Spreadsheet, Hit Alt+F11 to get in VB Editor. From in VB Editor hit Ctrl+g to get immediate window to see the Debug.Print ed stuff
End Sub

As far as I can tell, if you use this instead , in that last code, .._
MeNextFile = Dir(ThisWorkbook.Path & "\", vbDirectory)
_.. , then you get a complete list of everything there at the path
ThisWorkbook.Path & "\"
That includes Files , Folders and maybe other strange things .. .

Alan Elston

Good tip - however, maybe a slight correction: "If the file exists, then Dir returns the full path of the file". Not so, Dir only returns the filename, eg, Dir("C:\myPath\myFile.txt") returns "myFile.txt".

Thank you, it works great.

Never mind I figured it out. Had to add the function to the end of my sub

I am using Excel 2010. Writing a macro to load a file from c:temp.

When I try using FileThere I get the following Error.

Compile Error SubFunction not defined?