VBA – Create Text File with CreateTextFile

This tutorial will demonstrate how to create a text file with VBA.

Create a Text File

This lesson uses the FileSystemObject. In order to use it, you will need to set a reference to the VB script run-time library.

To create a text file, you can use this code below with CreateTextFile Method.

Sub FSOCreateTextFile()
    Dim FSO As Object
    Set FSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    Dim TextFile As Object

    Set TextFile = FSO.CreateTextFile("C:\Test\TestFile.txt")

End Sub

You can pass optional arguments to the CreateTextFile method:

• If you set the “overwrite” argument to true, an already existing file can also be overwritten.
• Setting the “unicode” argument true, a unicode file is created, otherwise (or if the argument is omitted) the result will be an ASCII file.

In the following example, an existing TestFile.txt will be overwritten with a unicode file:

Set TextFile = FSO.CreateTextFile("C:\Test\TestFile.txt", True, True)

Writing to Text File

After creating a text file you can write text to the file using a single line of code:

TextFile.Write "content"

Click the link to learn more about writing to text files using Write, WriteLine, WriteBlankLines methods.