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: äöüß" 'latin-1 or something by default
Close fnum

Is there some setting on Application level?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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: äöüß"
fsT.SaveToFile sFileName, 2 'Save binary data To disk

Certainly not as I expected...

Answer 3

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?

Answer 4

I looked into the answer from Máťa 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."

Máťa 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.

Answer 5

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(" & Format$(size) & ") = 0"
End Sub

Public Sub writeUtf()
Dim file As Integer
Dim s As String
Dim b() As Byte
  s = "äöüßµ@€|~{}[]²³\ .." & _
    " OMEGA" & ChrW$(937) & ", SIGMA" & ChrW$(931) & _
    ", alpha" & ChrW$(945) & ", beta" & ChrW$(946) & ", pi" & ChrW$(960) & 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