Decimalseperator lost after conversion from csv to excel with vb-script - excel

Question

I have a CSV with semicolon seperators that I would like to convert to a regular Excel sheet. I managed to do this with the code below, but I must have made a mistake because numbers with decimals in the original file that don't start with a zero are shown in Excel as number without the decimal separator. When I open the CSV manually in Excel the result will be fine, so it must be a side-effect of doing it with a script.
For example:
In the CSV there is a line:
2013-03-10 17:00:15; idle; 2,272298;; 0,121860
In the Excel sheet this becomes:
2013-03-10 17:00 | idle | 2.272.298| | 0,121860
Opened manually in excel gives:
2013-03-10 17:00 | idle | 2,272298| | 0,121860
Could somebody please tell me what I could/should change to keep the decimals as decimals in Excel? Possibly a way to tell Excel which symbol represents the decimal separator or an argument to force it into using European formats?
Kind regards, Nico
This is the script I currently have, where csvFile is a string with the full path to the original file and excelFile is a string with the full path to the location where I want to store the new excel sheet.
Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application") 'use excel
objExcel.Visible = true 'visible
objExcel.displayalerts=false 'no warnings
objExcel.Workbooks.Open(csvFile) 'open the file
objExcel.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs excelFile, -4143, , , False, False 'save as xls
objExcel.Quit 'close excel

Answer 1

Create a schema.ini file in the folder your csvFile lives in and describe it according to the rules given here.
Further reading: import, text files

Answer 2

There are several approaches possible, I will cover one that I favor:
Start Recording a macro
Create a new workbook
From that workbook go to Data > From Text and there you select the CSV file, then you can do all the required settings regarding Value separators, Decimal separators, Thousands separators. Also the specific data type can be selected for each column.
When the CSV content is added go to Data > Connections and Remove
the connection. The data will stay in the worksheet, but there is no
longer an active connection.
Save the workbook under the xls name
Stop the Recording
Now tweak the script a bit to your liking.

Answer 3

In general Excel honors the system's regional settings. The CSV import, however, sometimes has its own mind about the "correct" format, particularly when the imported file has the extension .csv.
I'd try the following. Rename the file to .txt or .tsv and import it like this:
objExcel.Workbooks.OpenText csvFile, , , 1, 1, False, False, True

Answer 4

I made a work around. I now create a copy of the CSV file where I replace all commas followed by a number by points. While not very effective it does give Excel what it wants and it is simple enough for an inexperienced programmer like me to use.
When doing so a college asked me to also remove white spaces and entries with duplicate values in the first column (the timestamp in this case).
The result was this script
'csvFile is a string with the full path to the file. e.g. "C:\\Program Files\\Program\\data.csv"
'tempFile is a string with the full path to the file. e.g. "C:\\Temp\\temp.csv"
'excelfile is a string with the full path to the file. e.g. "D:\\Data\\sheet.xls"
Set fs=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set writeFile = fs.CreateTextFile(tempFile,True)
Set readFile = fs.OpenTextFile(csvFile)
' regular expression to remove leading whitespaces
Set regular_expression = New RegExp
regular_expression.Pattern = "^\s*"
regular_expression.Multiline = False
' regular expression to change the decimal seperator into a point
Set regular_expression2 = New RegExp
regular_expression2.Global = True
regular_expression2.Pattern = ",(?=\d)"
regular_expression2.Multiline = False
'copy the original file to the temp file and apply the changes
Do Until readFile.AtEndOfStream
strLine= readFile.ReadLine
If (StrComp(current_timestamp,Mid(strLine, 1, InStr(strLine,";")),1)<>0) Then
If (Len(previous_line) > 2) Then
previous_line = regular_expression2.replace(previous_line,".")
writeFile.Write regular_expression.Replace(previous_line, "") & vbCrLf
End if
End if
current_timestamp = Mid(strLine, 1, InStr(strLine,";"))
previous_line = strLine
Loop
readFile.Close
writeFile.Close
Set objExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application") ' use excel
objExcel.Visible = true ' visible
objExcel.displayalerts=false ' no warning pop-ups
objExcel.Workbooks.Open(tempFile) ' open the file
objExcel.ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs excelfile, -4143, , , False, False 'save as excelfile
fs.DeleteFile tempFile ' clean up the temp file
I hope this will also be useful for someone else.