Save text file UTF-8 encoded with VBA

Question

how can I write UTF-8 encoded strings to a textfile from vba  like  Dim fnum As Integer fnum   FreeFile Open  myfile txt  For Output As fnum Print  fnum   special characters             latin-1 or something by default Close fnum   Is there some setting on Application level

User · Answer

I looked into the answer from  M  ta whose name hints at encoding qualifications and experience  The VBA docs say CreateTextFile filename   overwrite    unicode    creates a file  as a Unicode or ASCII file  The value is True if the file is created as a Unicode file  False if it s created as an ASCII file  If omitted  an ASCII file is assumed   It s fine that a file stores unicode characters  but in what encoding  Unencoded unicode can t be represented in a file   The VBA doc page for OpenTextFile filename   iomode   create   format     offers a third option for the format     TriStateDefault 2  opens the file using the system default   TriStateTrue 1  opens the file as Unicode   TriStateFalse 0  opens the file as ASCII     M  ta passes -1 for this argument    Judging from VB NET documentation  not VBA but I think reflects realities about how underlying Windows OS represents unicode strings and echoes up into MS Office  I don t know  the system default is an encoding using 1 byte unicode character using an ANSI code page for the locale  UnicodeEncoding is UTF-16  The docs also describe UTF-8 is also a  Unicode encoding   which makes sense to me  But I don t yet know how to specify UTF-8 for VBA output nor be confident that the data I write to disk with the OpenTextFile    1  is UTF-16 encoded  Tamalek s post is helpful

User · Answer

The traditional way to transform a string to a UTF-8 string is as follows  StrConv  quot hello world quot  vbFromUnicode   So put simply  Dim fnum As Integer fnum   FreeFile Open  quot myfile txt quot  For Output As fnum Print  fnum  StrConv  quot special characters           quot   vbFromUnicode  Close fnum  No special COM objects required

User · Answer

You can use CreateTextFile or OpenTextFile method  both have an attribute  unicode  usefull for encoding settings   object CreateTextFile filename   overwrite   unicode            object OpenTextFile filename   iomode   create   format       Example  Overwrite   CreateTextFile   fileName    filename   Set fso   CreateObject  Scripting FileSystemObject    Set out   fso CreateTextFile fileName  True  True   out WriteLine   Hello world          out close   Example  Append    OpenTextFile Set fso   CreateObject  Scripting FileSystemObject    Set out   fso OpenTextFile  filename   ForAppending  True  1   out Write  Hello world         out Close   See more on MSDN docs

User · Answer

Here is another way to do this - using the API function WideCharToMultiByte   Option Explicit  Private Declare Function WideCharToMultiByte Lib  kernel32 dll        ByVal CodePage As Long      ByVal dwFlags As Long      ByVal lpWideCharStr As Long      ByVal cchWideChar As Long      ByVal lpMultiByteStr As Long      ByVal cbMultiByte As Long      ByVal lpDefaultChar As Long      ByVal lpUsedDefaultChar As Long  As Long  Private Sub getUtf8 ByRef s As String  ByRef b   As Byte  Const CP UTF8 As Long   65001 Dim len s As Long Dim ptr s As Long Dim size As Long   Erase b   len s   Len s    If len s   0 Then       Err Raise 30030     Len WideChars    0    ptr s   StrPtr s    size   WideCharToMultiByte CP UTF8  0  ptr s  len s  0  0  0  0    If size   0 Then       Err Raise 30030     WideCharToMultiByte     0    ReDim b 0 To size - 1    If WideCharToMultiByte CP UTF8  0  ptr s  len s  VarPtr b 0    size  0  0    0 Then       Err Raise 30030     WideCharToMultiByte    amp  Format  size   amp       0  End Sub  Public Sub writeUtf   Dim file As Integer Dim s As String Dim b   As Byte   s                                   amp          OMEGA   amp  ChrW  937   amp     SIGMA   amp  ChrW  931   amp           alpha   amp  ChrW  945   amp     beta   amp  ChrW  946   amp     pi   amp  ChrW  960   amp  vbCrLf   file   FreeFile   Open  C  Temp TestUtf8 txt  For Binary Access Write Lock Read Write As  file   getUtf8 s  b   Put  file    b   Close  file End Sub

User · Answer

I found the answer on the web   Dim fsT As Object Set fsT   CreateObject  ADODB Stream   fsT Type   2  Specify stream type - we want To save text string data  fsT Charset    utf-8   Specify charset For the source text data  fsT Open  Open the stream And write binary data To the object fsT WriteText  special characters            fsT SaveToFile sFileName  2  Save binary data To disk   Certainly not as I expected

User · Answer

This writes a Byte Order Mark at the start of the file  which is unnecessary in a UTF-8 file and some applications  in my case  SAP  don t like it  Solution here  Can I export excel data with UTF-8 without BOM

[vba] Save text file UTF-8 encoded with VBA

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