This article was previously published under Q120596
In Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows, Microsoft Excel 2000, Microsoft Excel 2002, and Microsoft Office Excel 2003,text files that contain more than 65,536 rows cannot be opened in theirentirety. You cannot open these files because these versions ofMicrosoft Excel are limited to 65,536 rows. If you open a file thatcontains more data than this, the text file is truncated at the row 65,536, and you receive the following error message:
File not loaded completely.
However, you can use amacro to open the file and automatically break the text into multipleworksheets
Versions of Excel earlier than Excel 97 have a limit of 16,384 rows.
Versions of Excel later than Excel 2003 have a limit of 1,048,576 rows.
Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied. This includes, but is not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language that is being demonstrated and with the tools that are used to create and to debug procedures. Microsoft support engineers can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure. However, they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific requirements. The following sample macro prompts you for a text file name, and then opens thefile into memory. If the number of rows is larger than the Excelworksheet limit of 65,536, the macro breaks the file into multipleworksheets. This macro applies only to files you saved as text files anddoes not apply to any other file formats. The macro does not work withdatabase file formats.
Note that because this is a macro, using it may be significantly slowerthan clicking Open on the File menu.
'All lines that begin with an apostrophe (') are remarks and are not 'required for the macro to run.
Sub LargeFileImport() 'Dimension Variables Dim ResultStr As String Dim FileName As String Dim FileNum As Integer Dim Counter As Double 'Ask User for File's Name FileName = InputBox("Please enter the Text File's name, e.g. test.txt") 'Check for no entry If FileName = "" Then End 'Get Next Available File Handle Number FileNum = FreeFile() 'Open Text File For Input Open FileName For Input As #FileNum 'Turn Screen Updating Off Application.ScreenUpdating = False 'Create A New WorkBook With One Worksheet In It Workbooks.Add template:=xlWorksheet 'Set The Counter to 1 Counter = 1 'Loop Until the End Of File Is Reached Do While Seek(FileNum) <= LOF(FileNum) 'Display Importing Row Number On Status Bar Application.StatusBar = "Importing Row " & _ Counter & " of text file " & FileName 'Store One Line Of Text From File To Variable Line Input #FileNum, ResultStr 'Store Variable Data Into Active Cell If Left(ResultStr, 1) = "=" Then ActiveCell.Value = "'" & ResultStr Else ActiveCell.Value = ResultStr End If 'For Excel versions before Excel 97, change 65536 to 16384 If ActiveCell.Row = 65536 Then 'If On The Last Row Then Add A New Sheet ActiveWorkbook.Sheets.Add Else 'If Not The Last Row Then Go One Cell Down ActiveCell.Offset(1, 0).Select End If 'Increment the Counter By 1 Counter = Counter + 1 'Start Again At Top Of 'Do While' Statement Loop 'Close The Open Text File Close 'Remove Message From Status Bar Application.StatusBar = False End Sub
Note The macro does not parse the data into columns. After using themacro, you may also need to use the Text To Columns command on the Data menu to parse the data as needed.When you run this macro on a Macintosh, and you are attempting to open afile that is on the desktop, you must precede the file name with thefollowing
Hard disk:Desktop Folder:
where Hard disk is the name of your hard disk. Note that there is aspace between the words Desktop and Folder.