How to Open a CSV File With VBA

By L.P. Klages

i Siri Stafford/Digital Vision/Getty Images

A Comma Separated Value (CSV) file is a plain text file that has a single record on each line. Each line is separated by a comma. A CSV file is sometimes called a comma delimited file. You can work with CSV files in Microsoft Excel and it's possible to get Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to do the work for you, including opening the file at the push of a button.

Step 1

Open the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) in Excel by pressing "Alt" and "F11" together.

Step 2

Click on "Insert," then click on "Module."

Step 3

Cut and paste the following code into the blank window:

Sub opencsv() ' opencsv Macro Workbooks.Open Filename:= _ "C:\Desktop\myfile.csv" End Sub

Step 4

Change the file name in the above code to reflect the name of the file you want to open and the location it is in. For example, if you wanted to open a CSV file called Bills and it is located in the MyDocuments folder, then you would change the line of code that reads "C:\Desktop\myfile.csv" to "C:\MyDocuments\Bills.csv".

Step 5

Run the code by pressing "F5" from the VBE. Once you press F5, the file will open in Excel.

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