Saving .txt as .csv cancels all changes made by macro in the file. How to prevent it?

Question

The issue continues this topic and is associated with my earlier post. The code should deal with .csv files changing cells\' values and interior color. It does its job, but afte

Answer 1

What looked as a simple opening semicolon delimited text /cvs file in your earlier post is now looks complicated. Even overlooking other issues, in my trial, I find while saving txt/csv files from excel it may introduce some double quote in the saved file (depending on position of comma, spaces and semicolon in a line). May refer links (Saving a Excel File into .txt format without quotes) and link and link2

As what I understand, your requirement is simple to truncate 5th column of the semicolon delimited file with csv extension and save it back, the simple approach of may solve your the problem. However, I still not satisfied with the workaround approach and invite more simple and straight approach to solve the problem (consisting txt file with comma, spaces and semicolons, while semicolon is to be treated as delimiter)

Try

Sub test2()
Dim Fname As String, Path As String, Txt As String, Txt2 As String
Dim INum As Integer, ONum As Integer, TrucTo As Integer, ColNo As Long
Dim Cols As Variant

' Modify the variables to your requirement
Path = "C:\Users\user\Desktop\"
Fname = "Somefile.csv"     ' Target file name
Fname2 = "Somefile2.csv"   ' Temp file name
TrucTo = 10                ' truncated to chars
ColNo = 4                   '  column to be truncated -1

If Dir(Path & Fname2) <> "" Then Kill Path & Fname2


INum = FreeFile
Open Path & Fname For Input As #INum
ONum = FreeFile
Open Path & Fname2 For Output As #ONum

Do Until EOF(1)
    Line Input #1, Txt
    Cols = Split(Txt, ";")
        If UBound(Cols) >= ColNo Then
            If Len(Cols(ColNo)) >= truncto Then
            Cols(ColNo) = Left(Cols(ColNo), TrucTo)
            End If
        End If
    Txt2 = Join(Cols, ";")
    Print #ONum, Txt2
Loop
Close #ONum
Close #INum


Kill Path & Fname
Name Path & Fname2 As Path & Fname


End Sub

This is the result input & Output