Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Determining the Length of a Non-Document Text File.

Determining the Length of a Non-Document Text File

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 8, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365

Several other WordTips have discussed opening, reading, writing, appending, and closing text files. Another command associated with sequential text files is the LOF function. If used on an open file, it returns the length of the file, in bytes. In other words, you can determine the number of characters in the file. This can come in handy if you are processing a text file character by character. You can determine the length of the file and then read that many characters before you finish processing the file. The following code fragment is an example of how the LOF function is used:

Open "MyFile.Dat" for Input as #1
FileLen = LOF(1)

Note:

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WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11111) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Determining the Length of a Non-Document Text File.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is three minus 2?

2022-06-08 15:08:08

ron

Interesting. I'm not familiar with the LOF() command, so I looked it up. I found this
LOF(filenumber) – Length Open File
https://bettersolutions.com/vba/functions/lof-function.htm
Returns the length or size of an open file, in bytes (Long).
.
The file has to be open. You could also use the FILELEN() command without actually opening the file.
.
FILELEN(pathname)
https://bettersolutions.com/vba/functions/filelen-function.htm
Returns the length of a file in bytes (Long).
.
Seems FileLen() is simpler.

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