Microsoft KB Archive/249885

= Formatted text (.prn) is limited to 240 characters per line in Excel =

Article ID: 249885

Article Last Modified on 1/27/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office Excel 2007
 * Microsoft Office Excel 2003
 * Microsoft Excel 2002 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 2000 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q249885



SYMPTOMS
In Microsoft Excel, when you save a worksheet as a Formatted Text (Space Delimited) (.prn) file, any characters beyond the two-hundred fortieth character are wrapped to the next line.

Note If several rows on the same sheet contain text beyond 240 characters, the text begins wrapping at the row after the last row that contains text.

For example, consider the following sheet:          Number of   Cell   Characters -

A1            40 A2           255 A3            10 A4            21 A5             2 A6            52 A7           255 A8             5 A9             3 A20           13 The resulting formatted text file contains lines with the following number of characters:   Line Number   Characters 1                    40   2                    240   3                     10   4                     21   5                      2   6                     52   7                    240   8                      5   9                      3   10-19                  0   20                    13   21                     0   22                    15   23-26                  0   27                    15 After the last line (in this example, line 20), the line numbering starts at 1 for the lines that are wrapped. In effect, line 21 corresponds with line 1, line 22 corresponds with line 2, and so on.



CAUSE
This behavior occurs because, by design, Formatted Text (Space Delimited) (.prn) files have a limit of 240 characters per line.



WORKAROUND
Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. To create a space-delimited text file that exceeds the 240-character per line limitation, use a macro similar to the following sample macro.

Note Before you run this macro, do the following:
 * Select the cells to be included in the text file.
 * Verify that column widths are wide enough to view the largest string in each column.

Note The maximum column width for a single Excel column is 255 characters when formatted with a fixed-width font.
 * Use the Style menu commands to format the worksheet to use a fixed-width font.

For example, Courier is a fixed-width font.

The following sample code can be modified to export data delimited with characters other than a space. You must select the range of data to be exported before running this sample macro. Sub ExportText Dim delimiter As String Dim quotes As Integer Dim Returned As String delimiter = " " quotes = MsgBox("Surround Cell Information with Quotes?", vbYesNo) ' Call the WriteFile function passing the delimiter and quotes options. Returned = WriteFile(delimiter, quotes) ' Print a message box indicating if the process was completed. Select Case Returned Case "Canceled" MsgBox "The export operation was canceled." Case "Exported" MsgBox "The information was exported." End Select End Sub '---  Function WriteFile(delimiter As String, quotes As Integer) As String ' Dimension variables to be used in this function. Dim CurFile As String Dim SaveFileName Dim CellText As String Dim RowNum As Integer Dim ColNum As Integer Dim FNum As Integer Dim TotalRows As Double Dim TotalCols As Double ' Show Save As dialog box with the .TXT file name as the default. ' Test to see what kind of system this macro is being run on. If Left(Application.OperatingSystem, 3) = "Win" Then SaveFileName = Application.GetSaveAsFilename(CurFile, _     "Text Delimited (*.txt), *.txt",, "Text Delimited Exporter") Else SaveFileName = Application.GetSaveAsFilename(CurFile, _     "TEXT",, "Text Delimited Exporter") End If  ' Check to see if Cancel was clicked. If SaveFileName = False Then WriteFile = "Canceled" Exit Function End If  ' Obtain the next free file number. FNum = FreeFile ' Open the selected file name for data output. Open SaveFileName For Output As #FNum ' Store the total number of rows and columns to variables. TotalRows = Selection.Rows.Count TotalCols = Selection.Columns.Count ' Loop through every cell, from left to right and top to bottom. For RowNum = 1 To TotalRows For ColNum = 1 To TotalCols With Selection.Cells(RowNum, ColNum) Dim ColWidth as Integer ColWidth=Application.RoundUp(.ColumnWidth, 0) ' Store the current cells contents to a variable. Select Case .HorizontalAlignment Case xlRight CellText = Space(Abs(ColWidth - Len(.Text))) & .Text Case xlCenter CellText = Space(Abs(ColWidth - Len(.Text))/2) & .Text & _ Space(Abs(ColWidth - Len(.Text))/2) Case Else CellText = .Text & Space(Abs(ColWidth - Len(.Text))) End Select End With ' Write the contents to the file. ' With or without quotation marks around the cell information. Select Case quotes Case vbYes CellText = Chr(34) & CellText & Chr(34) & delimiter Case vbNo CellText = CellText & delimiter End Select Print #FNum, CellText; ' Update the status bar with the progress. Application.StatusBar = Format((((RowNum - 1) * TotalCols) _ + ColNum) / (TotalRows * TotalCols), "0%") & " Completed." ' Loop to the next column. Next ColNum ' Add a linefeed character at the end of each row. If RowNum <> TotalRows Then Print #FNum, "" ' Loop to the next row. Next RowNum ' Close the .prn file. Close #FNum ' Reset the status bar. Application.StatusBar = False WriteFile = "Exported" End Function Note The output file that this routine creates is, by definition, different from a Formatted Text(*.prn) file. By definition, the formatted text file cannot contain more than 240 characters per line. In addition, the formatted text file also contains printer font information. This sample macro does not. This solution is designed to give flexibility when you export to text files.

Additional query words: delimit parse export quote text XL2000 XL2002 XL2003 XL2007

Keywords: kbcode kbprb kbprogramming kbusage KB249885

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