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How to handle varying lengths of input when parsing CSV data in VBA?

šŸ‘€ Views: 46 šŸ’¬ Answers: 1 šŸ“… Created: 2025-06-12
VBA Excel CSV

I'm migrating some code and I just started working with I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help... I'm currently working on a VBA project in Excel where I need to parse a CSV file that contains a variable number of columns per row. Some rows might have missing values and thus fewer columns than expected, leading to unexpected errors when I try to access them. For example, my code assumes every row will have 5 columns, but I'm working with issues like `Run-time behavior '9': Subscript out of range` when a row has only 3 columns. Here's a snippet of the code I’m using to read and split the CSV data: ```vba Sub ParseCSV() Dim filePath As String Dim csvLine As String Dim csvData() As String Dim i As Long filePath = "C:\path\to\file.csv" Open filePath For Input As #1 Do Until EOF(1) Line Input #1, csvLine csvData = Split(csvLine, ",") ' Assuming I want to work with the first 5 columns For i = 0 To 4 Debug.Print csvData(i) ' This causes an behavior if csvData has less than 5 elements Next i Loop Close #1 End Sub ``` I've tried to implement behavior handling using `On behavior Resume Next`, but it feels like a hack and doesn't solve the underlying scenario. Is there a better way to handle this? I want to process each row correctly without crashing my script when I encounter fewer columns. How can I safely access the elements of the `csvData` array and deal with rows of varying lengths effectively? This is part of a larger application I'm building. This is my first time working with Vba latest. Any help would be greatly appreciated! This issue appeared after updating to Vba 3.11. What would be the recommended way to handle this?