saving excel file as tab-delimited text file without quotes - excel

Question

I have an Excel 2010 workbook. I need to save the used range of each of its worksheets as a tab-delimited text file with no quotes, with the same filename as the workbook and with an extension given by the worksheet name.
Note that Excel stupidly surrounds a value by quotes whenever it sees a comma, even though the delimiter is a tab; other than that, the normal "Save As" / "Text (Tab delimited)" would be fine.
I would prefer to do that using VBA code from within Excel.
If there is a Python solution, I'd be interested too. But at this point pywin32 support for Python 3 is only experimental, so I am not sure I can use it.

Answer 1

Ok here is a slightly complex routine which I wrote couple of months back for one of my clients. This code exports the Excel Worksheet to a Fixed Width File without QUOTES. Screenshots also attached. I am sure this code can be made even better :)
TRIED AND TESTED
Option Explicit
'~~> Change this to relevant output filename and path
Const strOutputFile As String = "C:\Output.Csv"
Sub Sample()
Dim ws As Worksheet
Dim rng As Range
Dim MyArray() As Long, MaxLength As Long
Dim ff As Long, i As Long, lastRow As Long, LastCol As Long
Dim strOutput As String
On Error GoTo Whoa
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
'~~> Change this to the respective sheet
Set ws = Sheets("Sheet1")
LastCol = ws.Cells(1, Columns.Count).End(xlToLeft).Column
'~~> Loop through each Column to get the max size of the field
For i = 1 To LastCol
MaxLength = getMaxLength(ws, i)
ReDim Preserve MyArray(i)
MyArray(i) = MaxLength
Next i
ff = FreeFile
'~~> output file
Open strOutputFile For Output As #ff
'~~> Write to text file
With ws
lastRow = .Range("A" & Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row
For Each rng In .Range("A1:A" & lastRow)
With rng
For i = 1 To UBound(MyArray)
'~~> Insert a DELIMITER here if your text has spaces
strOutput = strOutput & " " & Left(.Offset(0, i-1).Text & _
String(MyArray(i), " "), MyArray(i))
Next i
Print #ff, Mid(Trim(strOutput), 1)
strOutput = Empty
End With
Next rng
End With
LetsContinue:
On Error Resume Next
Close #ff
On Error GoTo 0
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
Exit Sub
Whoa:
MsgBox Err.Description
Resume LetsContinue
End Sub
'~~> Function to get the max size
Public Function getMaxLength(ws As Worksheet, Col As Long) As Long
Dim lastRow As Long, j As Long
getMaxLength = 0
lastRow = ws.Range("A" & ws.Rows.Count).End(-4162).Row
For j = 1 To lastRow
If Len(Trim(ws.Cells(j, Col).Value)) > getMaxLength Then _
getMaxLength = Len(Trim(ws.Cells(j, Col).Value))
Next j
End Function

Answer 2

Open your excel/csv/text
Perform your your required action and then You can saveas using file format as xlTextPrinter
ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:="Your File Name.txt", FileFormat:=xlTextPrinter, CreateBackup:=False
No need for extra code to replace extra quotes