Microsoft KB Archive/131554

= Formatted Text (.prn) Limited to 240 Characters Per Line =

Article ID: 131554

Article Last Modified on 8/15/2005

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Excel 97 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 95 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Excel 5.0 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q131554





SYMPTOMS
In Microsoft Excel, when you save a worksheet as a Formatted Text (Space Delimited) (.prn) file, characters beyond 240 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.

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 has 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 one for the lines that are wrapped. In effect, line 21 corresponds with line 1, line 22 corresponds with line 2, and so on.



CAUSE
Formatted Text (Space Delimited) (.prn) files have a limitation of 240 characters per line.



WORKAROUND
Microsoft provides examples of Visual Basic for Applications procedures for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. The Visual Basic procedures in this article are provided 'as is' and Microsoft does not guarantee that they can be used in all situations. While Microsoft support professionals can help explain the functionality of a particular macro, they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality, nor will they help you construct macros to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to consult one of the Microsoft Solution Providers. Solution Providers offer a wide range of fee-based services, including creating custom macros. For more information about Microsoft Solution Providers, call Microsoft Customer Information Service at (800) 426-9400.

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.
 * Use the Style menu command 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: 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(ColWidth - Len(.Text)) & .Text Case xlCenter CellText = Space((ColWidth - Len(.Text))/2) & .Text & _ Space((ColWidth - Len(.Text))/2) Case Else CellText = .Text & Space(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 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 example does not. This solution is designed to give flexibility when exporting to text files.

Additional query words: delimit parse export quote text XL

Keywords: kbprogramming kbprb kbcode kbusage KB131554

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