How to set decimal separator in MS Access using VBA?

Question

My software creates PAIN001.XML files directly from an Access financial database. The decimal separator must always be a dot. The numbers are formatted with:

MyText = Format(MyNumber, "#0.00")

However, the format string's dot is automatically replaced by the system decimal separator, which might be "," instead of "." !

In Excel there are easy solutions, for example:

Application.DecimalSeparator = "."
...

However, MS Access doesn't recognize this application property. Is there a simple way to define a decimal separator within Access vba code ?

Of course, one can create a function which scans each MyText number for wrong decimal separators and replaces them with a dot, but this function would have to be called separately for each number, slowing down the code quite a lot…

Answer 1

The decimal separator must always be a dot.

Then use Str :

MyText = Str(MyNumber)

To convert such a string to a number use Val :

MyNumber = Val(MyText)

Answer 2

I guess the problem is not solveable with the decimal separator Application.DecimalSeparator = "." , even if it was supported by the Access library. It is a rather complicated issue, for the non-US users, as we are used to have , as a decimal separator.

In general, VBA considers only . as a decimal separator. Without taking care of the application default separator, the location of the user and their settings. Thus, some interesting cases could happen:

Sub TestMe()
    Dim myText As String
    myText = "123,42"
    Debug.Print Replace(Format(myText, "#0.00"), ",", ".")
End Sub

A possible solution, that I have implemented some time ago was to use Replace() and to replace as in the gif above. It could be a bit slow indeed, but taking into account the usage of VBA and Access, extreme speed is not something the app could achieve anyway.