Importing a CSV file into Excel

Question

I need help making this code run faster. I am using it to import a CSV file into Excel. It works, but it is very slow. The file is almost 20MB.

{Sub OpenTextFile()
Dim FilePath As String
Dim linitem As Variant
FilePath = "filepath.txt"
Open FilePath For Input As #1
row_number = 0
Do
Line Input #1, LineFromFile
LineItems = Split(LineFromFile, "|")
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 30).Value = LineItems(0)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 29).Value = LineItems(1)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 28).Value = LineItems(2)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 27).Value = LineItems(3)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 26).Value = LineItems(4)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 25).Value = LineItems(5)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 24).Value = LineItems(6)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 23).Value = LineItems(7)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 22).Value = LineItems(8)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 21).Value = LineItems(9)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 20).Value = LineItems(10)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 19).Value = LineItems(11)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 18).Value = LineItems(12)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 17).Value = LineItems(13)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 16).Value = LineItems(14)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 15).Value = LineItems(15)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 14).Value = LineItems(16)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 13).Value = LineItems(17)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 12).Value = LineItems(18)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 11).Value = LineItems(19)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 10).Value = LineItems(20)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 9).Value = LineItems(21)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 8).Value = LineItems(22)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 7).Value = LineItems(23)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 6).Value = LineItems(24)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 5).Value = LineItems(25)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 4).Value = LineItems(26)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 3).Value = LineItems(27)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 2).Value = LineItems(28)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 1).Value = LineItems(29)
ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 0).Value = LineItems(30)
row_number = row_number + 1
Loop Until EOF(1)
Close #1
End Sub
}

• Mathieu Guindon: Have you tried setting Application.ScreenUpdating to False and then back to True once you're done with the file?

Answer 1

Not sure about the "faster" thing but you can replace the 31 lines of assignments with a 3 line for loop:

For r As Integer = 0 To 30
 ActiveCell.Offset(row_number, 30 - r).Value = LineItems(r)
Next

Programming is about automating repetitive tasks, this should also apply to the code you write.

• user25830: True, i am a beginner. I tried a loop but i could not write one that works. Grateful for your help
• WernerCD: I would hesitate to tag this as an answer. If your new here as well, you might want to wait awhile for answers to your actual question: How to make the code faster... vs this honestly good answer to an unasked question: How to make the code cleaner.
• ChrisWue: I have to agree with @WernerCD, I don't really think this solves your problem. Although to be fair codereview is not about solving programing problems, it's about reviewing existing code ;)
• user25830: Point well taken.

Answer 2

If I were to rewrite your code, I'd do it like this:

Option Explicit

Step one, always be explicit. Nobody likes seeing a variable being used that they never saw declared anywhere.

Public Sub ImportTextFile()

Step two, name the procedure after what it's doing, and make it do that.

 Dim filePath As String
 filePath = "filepath.txt"
 Dim fileNumber As Long
 fileNumber = FreeFile

FreeFile will give you a file number that's ok to use. Hard-coding a file number is never a good idea, even if you're only using one file.

 Dim inputData As String
 Dim lineCount As Long
 On Error Goto ErrHandler
 ToggleWaitMode True, "Importing text file..."

On Error Goto ErrHandler means if anything wrong happens (file not found, more data in the file than can fit on the worksheet, or whatever), we'll skip straight to an error-handling subroutine where we'll take good care of closing our file and toggle "wait mode" back off.

 Open filePath For Input As #fileNumber
 Do Until EOF(fileNumber)
 Line Input #fileNumber, inputData
 lineCount = lineCount + 1
 WriteLineContentToActiveSheet inputData, lineCount
 Loop
 Close #fileNumber

So the ImportTextFile procedure does nothing but reading the file's content. WriteLineContentToActiveSheet will do the worksheet-writing part.

ErrHandler:
 ToggleWaitMode
 If Err.Number <> 0 Then
 Close 'closes any file left open
 MsgBox Err.Description
 Err.Clear
 End If
End sub

The code under this label will execute even if no error occurred, this is why we're checking for Err.Number being other than 0. But regardless of whether there's an error or not, we always want to ToggleWaitMode.

Private Sub ToggleWaitMode(Optional ByVal wait As Boolean = False, Optional ByVal statusBarMessage As String = vbNullString)
 Application.ScreenUpdating = True 'ensure status message gets displayed
 Application.StatusBar = statusBarMessage
 Application.Cursor = IIf(wait, xlWait, xlDefault)
 Application.ScreenUpdating = Not wait
 Application.EnableEvents = Not Wait
End Sub

This small procedure takes two optional parameters. If none are specified, "wait mode" is toggled off - this means the status bar message is reset, the mouse cursor goes back to default, Excel resumes redrawing the screen and fires events whenever something happens. "Wait mode" is just all that reversed :)

Private Sub WriteLineContentToActiveSheet(ByVal inputData As String, ByVal targetRow As Long)
 Dim lineFields() As String
 lineFields = Split(inputData, "|")
 Dim fieldCount As Integer
 fieldCount = UBound(lineFields)
 Dim currentField As Integer
 Dim targetColumn As Integer
 Dim fieldValue As String
 With ActiveSheet
 For currentField = 0 To fieldCount
 fieldValue = lineFields(currentField)
 targetColumn = fieldCount - currentField + 1
 .Cells(targetRow, targetColumn).Value = fieldValue
 Next
 End With
End Sub

This small procedure takes a single line of data, splits it into as many fields as it has, and writes each field value into a cell of the active sheet. Using UBound we're no longer tied to a specific number of fields - if the file format changes, the procedure should still work. And if it doesn't, the procedure that called it will cleanly handle the error for us.

Local variables currentField, targetColumn and fieldValue are not necessary - they could all be inlined, but having them makes code easier to follow and allows you to place breakpoints to validate their values as you run the code line-by-line with F8 when you're debugging.

---

Couple observations:

• You need to indent your code. Indentation makes it much easier to read, for yourself and anyone looking at it. Give that Tab button some lovin'!
  • Procedures define a scope, anything under it should be indented.
  • Within a scope, code blocks should also be indented - this includes If blocks, With blocks and any code that runs inside a loop.
• OpenTextFile is a bad name for a procedure that actually imports a text file.
• Be consistent with your naming: chose a convention, and stick to it.
• You're reading a file, that's an I/O operation and by Murphy's Law this is going to fail one day or another. Make sure your code properly handles any error that could happen while processing the file, you don't want to leave a file handle opened by mistake.
• Importing a 20mb text file will take a while, even with screen updating turned off. Tell your user you're working, give'em a hourglass cursor, and you can even update the statusbar message every couple thousand lines read/written (just call ToggleWaitMode True with a new status message) so they know it's not frozen.

• user25830: Thank you, i am here to learn. I will take the advice / critique and learn from it. Thank you for taking the time to look at my "code".
• user25830: Thanks retailcoder, i appreciate your help. I learned a lot. I tried your code, and i am getting a "Array expected" @ Ubound(inputData). It just freeses
• Mathieu Guindon: oops my bad, typo - should read UBound(lineFields)... fixed now.
• Mathieu Guindon: UBound stands for "upper bound" and returns the upper boundary of an array. That's the number of fields we have in LineFields after the Split, and so it represents the number of fields we have - hence fieldCount.
• user25830: Thanks, i tried it. it works but not faster. It gets stuck in imporitng the file. It is a large file so it might be that it will take time no matter what. Thanks a lot for your help, i appreciate it. God Bless

Answer 3

You can also use the With statement this way:

With ActiveCell
 For r As Integer = 0 To 30
 .Offset(row_number, 30 - r).Value = LineItems(r)
 Next
End With

Thus, Excel doesn't have to call the ActiveCell object at each loop.

• Mathieu Guindon: It's still calling it - the with block is just sort-of hiding it, hence the readability debate around that keyword :)
• jmoreno: @retailcoder: are you sure it calls it in each line, or does it call it once and maintain a reference to it? Given that ActiveCell is a function, it should do the later, which should be a bit faster.
• Mathieu Guindon: After verification, it seems you're right about this. Sorry!
• jmoreno: @Jmax: Assuming that VBA and VB.net do the same thing, that should be faster. See this SO answer: stackoverflow.com/a/18288030/234954
• Mathieu Guindon: Yup. +1 and I'm stealing this, I really thought With was merely syntactic sugar. Thanks @jmoreno for that link.

Answer 4

One of the slowest parts of Excel VBA is writing to the grid. Whenever you have a lot of data to write you should put that data in an array and write it all at once. Here's how I would rewrite your code to do that.

Sub OpenTextFile()
 Dim sFilePath As String
 Dim sInput As String
 Dim vaLines As Variant
 Dim vaLineItems As Variant
 Dim aNew() As Variant
 Dim i As Long, j As Long
 Dim lCnt As Long
 sFilePath = "filepath.txt"
 Open sFilePath For Input As #1
 'Read in whole file at one, then close it
 sInput = Input$(LOF(1), 1)
 Close #1
 'Split the lines and the first line to set up aNew
 vaLines = Split(sInput, vbNewLine)
 vaLineItems = Split(vaLines(0), "|")
 ReDim aNew(LBound(vaLines) To UBound(vaLines), LBound(vaLineItems) To UBound(vaLineItems))
 'Loop through the lines
 For i = LBound(vaLines) To UBound(vaLines)
 vaLineItems = Split(vaLines(i), "|")
 'Loop through the items, add to aNew in reverse
 For j = LBound(vaLineItems) To UBound(vaLineItems)
 aNew(lCnt, UBound(vaLineItems) - j) = vaLineItems(j)
 Next j
 lCnt = lCnt + 1
 Next i
 'Write to the range all at once
 Sheet1.Range("A1").Resize(UBound(aNew, 1) + 1, UBound(aNew, 2) + 1).Value = aNew
End Sub

aNew is a poorly named variable that will hold the array that gets written to the sheet. By reading in the whole text file at once, you can redimension aNew to the right number of rows. Then by reading in the first line and splitting it, you get the number of columns for aNew (assuming they're all the same number of columns).

The loops simply fill aNew with the info in the order we want it. Finally, the array is assigned to the Value property.

Answer 5

An alternative approach would be to code the import of the file as a separate sheet. Then select used range and copy to where those values have to go.

This way you will let Excel do the hard part.