Manipulating text files in vba

[JetEscamilla]

I have some large text output from a structural analysis program (MDX) and I am trying to get a comparison between that and some other calculations that were done by hand.

The text file is very large and all the data in the text file is not user friendly. Instead of all design forces being in a nice text block I can copy and paste into excel I am going to have to manually search for the design members I need and then pull the data. I would like to create a macro to do this for me. Is this possible in vba?

I have used vba to do some complex data manipulation internally in excel, but never with text files.

Thanks.

 

[JetEscamilla]

So...

There is string of text "Service Axial Forces - k" that is always in front of the data I want. I would like to seach for it and then when I find it "pull in" the next 14 lines of text. Then repeat until the text is done searching. I can seperate the text after with delineators, but if I can somehow do that in vba, even better.

 

[John_w]

Use the Open and Line Input statements to read the file line by line and the Instr function to search for the string.