Remove illegal characters while saving workbook Excel VBA

Question

this code basically reformats an xls file and saves it as an xlsx. however it uses G2 & H2 to grab the filename for the newly formatted file.

Answer 1

Because there could be more illegal characters in the filename. Your approach is right but it's not comprehensive list of illegal characters to remove or replace from the filename before saving it. For eg. these characters are missing from the array in your code -> : & . However it is advised to keep filename rid of other allowed special characters too.

Below, I am providing the function which returns a safe string that can be used to produce filename before saving.

Function ReplaceIllegalCharacters(strIn As String, strChar As String) As String
    Dim strSpecialChars As String
    Dim i As Long
    strSpecialChars = "~""#%&*:<>?{|}/\[]" & Chr(10) & Chr(13)

    For i = 1 To Len(strSpecialChars)
        strIn = Replace(strIn , Mid$(strSpecialChars, i, 1), strChar)
    Next

    ReplaceIllegalCharacters = strIn 
End Function

Specifically, in your code, replace the ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs line with this line:

ActiveWorkbook.SaveAs Filename:= _
   WBPath & "\BOM_" & Range("G2").Value2 & "_" & ReplaceIllegalCharacters(Range("H2").Value2, "_") & ".xlsx" _
    , FileFormat:=xlOpenXMLWorkbook, CreateBackup:=False