Reading International/Special Characters in VBA - excel

Question

I read an Excel spreadsheet row by row and for each row create a textfile including information from the columns.
From time to time there is foreign text in some of the spreadsheet cells. In the debugger the foreign text appears as '?' question marks. It fails when trying to write these question marks to the text file.
This is a snippet of the code that reads the values from a row to a string array
Set oFS = CreateObject("Scripting.Filesystemobject")
For Each rID In oSh.UsedRange.Columns("A").Cells
For Each rValue In oSh.UsedRange.Rows(rowCount).Cells
ReDim Preserve columnValues(columnCount)
columnValues(columnCount) = rValue
columnCount = columnCount + 1
Next
Next
This is the code which writes to a text file
sFNText = sMakeFolder & "\" & rID.Value & ".txt"
Set oTxt = oFS.OpenTextFile(sFNText, 2, True)
For i = 0 To UBound(columnTitles)
oTxt.Write columnTitles(i) & ": " & columnValues(i) & vbNewLine
Next i
oTxt.Close
I have experimented with changing the format of opentextfile and also using AscW and ChrW to convert to and from ansi.
EDIT: In particular I am trying to read in Greek symbols (pi, omega etc.) and write them back out to a textfile. I have used the
StrConv(Cells(1, 1), vbUnicode)
method that was detailed in How can I create text files with special characters in their filenames and have got that example working. It seems now a problem with writing this to a textfile. nixda's example seems to work in isolation when using his Print command, however when I try
otxt.Write
to write my stored variable to a textfile it writes out garbage, as opposed to the print method which produces the correct result. Looking at the debugger both variables are stored identically (print method + write), so I believe it is now down to the output method (otxt.Write) which is converting the stored variable into garbage. I have tried using the -1 & -2 options for OpenTextFile - both producing garbage results.

Answer 1

I have the following sheet:
and the following code:
Sub writeUnicodeText()
Dim arr_Strings() As String
i = 0
For Each oCell In ActiveSheet.Range("A1:A4")
ReDim Preserve arr_Strings(i)
arr_Strings(i) = oCell.Value
i = i + 1
Next
Set oFS = CreateObject("Scripting.Filesystemobject")
Set oTxt = oFS.OpenTextFile("C:\users\axel\documents\test.txt", 2, True, -1)
For i = 0 To UBound(arr_Strings)
oTxt.Write arr_Strings(i) & vbNewLine
Next i
oTxt.Close
End Sub
This produces the following file:

Answer 2

This is the code I use to write to a text. I've tried many methods and this has worked the best.
Sub ProcessX()
FName1 = "Location of File"
txtStrngX = OpenTextFileToString2(FName1)
end sub
Public Function OpenTextFileToString2(ByVal strFile As String) As String
Dim hFile As Long
hFile = FreeFile
Open strFile For Input As #hFile
OpenTextFileToString2 = Input$(LOF(hFile), hFile)
Close #hFile
End Function
As for reading in from rows just be sure to set your variable to a string when compiling and any method should work fine.

Answer 3

sorry. That's reading from a text. Here is writing.
Public Function RecordsetToText(rs As Object, Optional FullPath _
As String, Optional ValueDelimiter As String = " ") As Boolean
'PURPOSE: EXPORTS DATA FROM AN ADO RECORDSET TO A TEXT FILE
'PARAMETERS:
'RS: Recordset to Export. Open the recordset before
'passing it to this function
'FullPath (Optional): FullPath of text file.
'if not specified, the function uses app.path +
'rs.txt
'ValueDelmiter (Optional): String to delimiter
'values within a row. If not specified, an tab
'is used
'RETURNS: True if successful, false if an error occurs
'COMMENTS: Rows are delimited by a carriage return
Dim sFullPath As String
Dim sDelimiter As String
Dim iFileNum As Integer
Dim lFieldCount As Long
Dim lCtr As Long
Dim oField As ADODB.Field
On Error GoTo ErrorHandler:
If RecordSetReady(rs) = False Then Exit Function
sDelimiter = ValueDelimiter
If FullPath = "" Then
sFullPath = App.Path
If Right(sFullPath, 1) <> "\" Then sFullPath = _
sFullPath & "\"
sFullPath = sFullPath & "rs.txt"
Else
sFullPath = FullPath
End If
iFileNum = FreeFile
Open sFullPath For Output As #iFileNum
With rs
lFieldCount = .Fields.Count - 1
On Error Resume Next
.MoveFirst
On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
For lCtr = 0 To lFieldCount
Set oField = .Fields(lCtr)
If lCtr < lFieldCount Then
Print #iFileNum, oField.Name & sDelimiter;
Else
Print #iFileNum, oField.Name
End If
Next
Do While Not .EOF
For lCtr = 0 To lFieldCount
Set oField = .Fields(lCtr)
If lCtr < lFieldCount Then
Print #iFileNum, oField.Value & sDelimiter;
Else
Print #iFileNum, oField.Value
End If
Next
.MoveNext
Loop
End With
RecordsetToText = True
ErrorHandler:
On Error Resume Next
Close #iFileNum
End Function