Read A Binary File From Excel
In Excel it is possible to read a binary file to provide a method to look at the actual internals of any binary file, such as a Word document. When opened using the method illustrated below the user can view the contents of a file in Hexadecimal or the decimal equivalent of the ASCII internal characters.This example below scans the internals of a Word documents to locate and then copy a date and display it. Auto-update date fields in word can never be viewed with their previous values when the file is opened in Word. An "auto-update" date field always opens with today's date. I needed to see the previous date the file was saved. This example cycles through all the Word files in a given directory.
Program Code
Public Sub LoopReadBinaryFile()
' *********************************************************
' This loops through the Word Files and Extracts the Date
' And The File Name
' *********************************************************
Dim strDirectoryPathToWordFiles As String
Dim i As Long
Dim j As Long
Dim strArray(1 To 5) As String
Dim strExtractedDate As String
Dim strWordFileName As String
Dim byteArr() As Byte
Dim fileInt As Integer: fileInt = FreeFile
strDirectoryPathToWordFiles = "C:\VIMFiles\"
strWordFileName = Dir(strDirectoryPathToWordFiles, vbNormal)
Do Until strWordFileName = ""
Open strDirectoryPathToWordFiles & strWordFileName For Binary Access Read As #fileInt
ReDim byteArr(0 To LOF(fileInt) - 1)
Get #fileInt, , byteArr
j = 0
For i = 1 To UBound(byteArr)
If byteArr(i) > 64 And byteArr(i) < 91 Then
strArray(1) = Chr(byteArr(i))
strArray(2) = Chr(byteArr(i + 1))
strArray(3) = Chr(byteArr(i + 2))
strArray(4) = Chr(byteArr(i + 3))
strArray(5) = Chr(byteArr(i + 4))
If strArray(1) = "M" And _
strArray(2) = "E" And _
strArray(3) = "R" And _
strArray(4) = "G" And _
strArray(5) = "E" Then
strExtractedDate = ""
j = i
Do Until j > i + 30
If byteArr(j) > 46 And byteArr(j) < 58 Then
strExtractedDate = strExtractedDate & Chr(byteArr(j))
End If
j = j + 1
Loop
End If
End If
Next i
MsgBox ("File " & strWordFileName & " Is Dated " & strExtractedDate)
Close #fileInt
strWordFileName = Dir
Loop
End Sub