Programming Excel with VBA and .NET

Common Tasks

In addition to reading and writing files, you also often need to manage the files on a computer. The most common tasks are listed in Table 3-15.

Table 3-15. Common tasks for Visual Basic’s intrinsic file functions

Task	Function	Comments
Check if file exists	Dir	Also used to list files in a folder.
Delete a file	Kill	Deletes a file if it is not locked or read-only.
Get the current folder	CurDir	Excel may change the current folder when a workbook is saved or opened by the user.
Change current folder	ChDir	You can use characters like .. to move up one folder.
Change current drive	ChDrive	Only the first letter from the argument is used.
Create a folder	MkDir	May include path specifiers like . (current folder) or .. (up one folder). Does not change the current folder.
Delete a folder	RmDir	Folder must be empty before it can be deleted.
Get/change file attributes	FileAttr	File attributes include hidden, read-only, archive.
Make a backup copy	FileCopy	Copies an existing file to a new filename.
Rename a file	Name	Changes a filename.

In general, it is not a good idea to get the current folder (CurDir) or change the current folder (ChDir) from Visual Basic when working with Excel because saving or opening a file from the Excel user interface may subsequently change the current folder. It is a better practice to use the path properties provided by Excel objects when working with folders in Excel.

For example, the following code ...