Adding data to a specific column in a text file - vba

Question

I was wondering if there's a way in Access VBA to open a text file, and append data to the end of each line, at a specific column / space?
Basically, I need to open the text file and place a character at column # 300 of each line in the file (which is after all of the data).
I know I could just import the data into Access, add the column, and then export it, but for business reasons I'm trying to avoid this.
Thanks!

Answer 1

You can accomplish this using the Microsoft Scripting Runtime library. Add a reference to that library in your VBA project.
Here is a procedure that will append a delimiter (I've used a comma in my sample) to the end of each record in the text file.
Private Const DELIMITER As String = "," 'this is the text file delimiter that will add a column
Private Const FILE_PATH As String = "C:\temp\" 'this is the directory where the text file resides
Private Sub AppendColumnToTextFile()
Dim fso As New FileSystemObject
Dim readStream As Scripting.TextStream
Dim writeStream As Scripting.TextStream
'this is the name of the text file that needs a column appended
Dim currentFile As String: currentFile = "Test.csv"
'this is a temp text file where we'll re-write each record with an additional column
Dim tempFile As String: tempFile = "Test.New.csv"
'set the read/write streams
Set readStream = fso.OpenTextFile(FILE_PATH & currentFile, ForReading)
Set writeStream = fso.OpenTextFile(FILE_PATH & tempFile, ForWriting, True)
'read each line of the text file, and add a deilimeter at the end
Do While Not readStream.AtEndOfStream
writeStream.WriteLine readStream.ReadLine & DELIMITER
Loop
'close the streams
readStream.Close
writeStream.Close
fso.CopyFile FILE_PATH & tempFile, FILE_PATH & currentFile, True 'copy the temp file to the original file path
Kill FILE_PATH & tempFile 'delete the temp file
Set writeStream = Nothing
Set appendStream = Nothing
Set fso = Nothing
End Sub