Excel export to .txt via script

Question

I got the issue to export a huge amount of Excel cells to a .txt file, which necessarily needs to in UTF-8 format. Therefore I made a VBScript, which is executed by a batch file and it totally does what it should (despite it creates a UTF-16 file).

Set file = fso.OpenTextFile(FILE, 2, True, -1)

In the documentation is mentioned that the -1 will generate a Unicode file and I am quite sure, that this is limited to UTF-16.

My questions are now: am I missing something or it is quite not possible to achieve this with VBScript? Is there an easier way? Besides that: is this platform independent?

Answer 1

The FileSystemObject doesn't support UTF-8, but ADODB.Stream objects do.

...

'Note: wb is the variable holding your workbook object
'Save worksheet as Unicode text ...
wb.SaveAs "C:\utf16.txt", 42

'... read the Unicode text into a variable ...
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
txt = fso.OpenTextFile("C:\utf16.txt", 1, False, -1).ReadAll

'... and export it as UTF-8 text.
Set stream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
stream.Open
stream.Type     = 2 'text
stream.Position = 0
stream.Charset  = "utf-8"
stream.WriteText txt
stream.SaveToFile "C:\utf8.txt", 2
stream.Close

...