Introduction to VBA GetOpenFilenameVBA GetOpenFilename allows you to select a file from a file explorer window without actually opening the file. The method returns a boolean of “False” if no file is selected or the dialog is canceled, and returns either a string or an array of strings if file(s) is/are selected. Show
It’s worth noting that, rather than a boolean, GetOpenFilename will return a string equal to “False” if your data type is a String instead of a Variant. This will make more sense when you look at these examples. You might be wondering why you would want to get a file path but not open the file. Let’s say you wanted to grab tab-delimited source files that you’ll parse later and insert into a spreadsheet. You may have a macro that takes a couple minutes to run, but the first minute is spent doing some preprocessing. You don’t want your user to wait a full minute before being prompted to select the files he wants to process. In situations like this, it’s better to ask the user up front which file paths he wants to get, then run your macro and open the files when you actually need to access them. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense from a system memory or a user experience perspective to open files immediately. VBA GetOpenFilename ExampleBasic Example
Make powerful macros with our free VBA Developer Kit Tutorials like this can be complicated. That’s why we created our free VBA Developer Kit and our Big Book of Excel VBA Macros to supplement this tutorial. Grab them below and you’ll be writing powerful macros in no time. When you execute the above macro, the most basic file picker window will appear. The basic file picker window has no customization or restrictions on types of files to select. VBA GetOpenFilename File Picker Note that, by default, the VBA GetOpenFilename method will only allow the user to select a single file. The return value is a string, so whatever you do with the rest of your code, it should be manipulating a string. In this case, the name of your file is stored in the string fileStringBasic . The GetOpenFilename file picker is just one of several ways to work with files in VBA. If you want to become a true file I/O expert, you should look at our comprehensive VBA File I/O Cheat Sheet filled with 50+ tips for working with files and over 30 file input/output macro examples. Restricting File Types with VBA GetOpenFilenameIf you simply need a quick and dirty
solution, the above will work fine. But let’s say you want to enforce some file type restrictions. For example, what if you had a huge list of .txt and .csv files, but you only want to view the .txt files? To do this, you can use the You should list your restrictions as a displayed name and a file extension pair, separated by a comma. Separate each subsequent allowable file type with another comma. In this example, we allow regular text
files and some arbitrary file type we call “special” files (with the extension .special). The
VBA GetOpenFilename Prompt with specific filetypes The “2” in our code marks the default file type, based on an array version of the This GetOpenFilename example also returns a string of the selected filepath or the string “False” if the dialog is closed without selecting a file. Selecting Multiple Files with VBA GetOpenFilename...and changing the file picker titleIf you want to allow the user to select multiple files, we need to set the
Running this code will produce the following file picker dialog box: This VBA GetOpenFilename Prompt allows multiple files to be selected When you declare your variables with the intention of using MultiSelect, make sure to use Variant data types. Even if the user selects a single file, an array will be returned with one entry. If you declared your variable as a string, you will get a type mismatch error. Unfortunately, if the file picker window is canceled, the function returns the Boolean FALSE. A variant (if a file is selected) and a Boolean (if the window is canceled) are two different variable types, so you could find yourself with a type mismatch errors if you’re not careful. To avoid this, it’s best to check that the variable
type you’re working with is How can you do that? You use the For a basic array, also called a vbArray, the number is 8192, Another constant is often added to this base number depending on the type of array. Thus you should use For you folks using the GetOpenFilename method on a Windows machine, that completes the tutorial. If you are targeting Mac users, however, you get the option to change the word that’s printed on the
Open button. You can change the text of the button to something else using the If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to my free wellsrPRO VBA Training Program using the form below. Ready to do more with VBA? This article was written by Cory Sarver, a contributing writer for The VBA Tutorials Blog. Visit him on LinkedIn and his personal page. What is the VBA code to open a file?Steps to Open a Workbook using VBA. To start the code, use the “Workbooks” object.. Type a dot (.) after that and select the Open method from the list.. Specify the file path in the first argument and make sure to enclose it in double quotation marks.. In the end, run the code to open the workbook.. How do you reference a workbook in VBA?VBA Cell References – Referencing Files and Worksheets. To refer to a workbook: Workbooks(“NameOfFile. xls”).. Use the specific name of the file, followed by the extension.. To refer to the current workbook, the macro is located in: ThisWorkbook.. To refer to the active workbook: ActiveWorkbook.. How do I browse files using VBA?Fixing the Code. Open the selected file.. Store the contents of the file in the variable “OpenBook”. Select the first sheet in the workbook.. Copy the contents of cells A1 through E20.. Paste the copied data as values into the file named “SelectFile” starting in cell A10.. Close the workbook selected by the user.. How do I select a file in Excel VBA?VBA Blogs: File Path Selector. Dim DialogBox As FileDialog.. Set DialogBox = Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFilePicker) DialogBox.Title = "Select file for " & FileType. ... . If DialogBox.SelectedItems.Count = 1 Then. path = DialogBox.SelectedItems(1). End If. ThisWorkbook.Names("File_Path").RefersToRange.Value = path.. |