FileSystemObject in VBA – Explained

FileSystemObject also called FSO, provides an easy object-based model to access a computer’s file system. You simply have to create an instance of FileSystemObject in VBA and then you can generate files, read files, delete files, iterate through folders, and do many other operations on your computer’s file system.

The FileSystemObject is present inside the Microsoft Scripting Runtime Library i.e. Scrrun.dll. This DLL supports the creation and manipulation of files using TextStream object and this is the reason why FSO doesn’t support operation on binary files.

Uses of File System Object

FileSystemObject can be used for multiple tasks such as:

• Creating, opening, reading, writing, and deleting text files.
• Creating, altering, and deleting folders.
• Iterating files and folders.
• Copying and moving files or folders.
• Checking if a location (file path) exists or not.

Accessing FileSystemObject

The FileSystemObject comprises several object collections and each of these object collections contains information about a specific aspect of the file system. These collections are:

So, diagrammatically a FileSystemObject can be shown as:

Please note that FSO communicates with most of the above objects indirectly. It just directly contains the object collection for “Drives”. Each “Drive” object in the “Drives” collection contains a chain of “Folder” objects. And each “Folder” object contains a “File” collection.

To make it more meaningful, let’s say it this way: A FileSystemObject contains three main methods to fetch (read) specific information about Drives, Folders, or Files, these methods are GetDrive, GetFolder and GetFile respectively. Now let’s say you need to find the file size of a particular file, so you will create an instance of the GetFile method and then fetch its size property.

Note: GetDrive, GetFolder and GetFile are not the only methods inside FSO, I have just used them to explain things. In the below section we will see all the methods contained inside FileSystemObject.

FSO Methods

The below table gives details about various FileObjectSystem methods and the tasks they perform:

Creating a FileSystemObject in VBA: In this section, we will deal with two things:

• Creating a reference of Microsoft Scripting Runtime Library i.e. Scrrun.dll
• Creating an FSO Object.

Creating a reference of Microsoft Scripting Runtime Library

To create a reference of Microsoft Scripting Runtime Library follow the below steps:

• First of all, open the VBA editor by pressing “Alt + F11”.

• Next, navigate to “Tools” > “Reference” as shown above.

• This will open a reference window. Here select and check the entry “Microsoft Scripting Runtime” and click “OK”.
• Now the reference to Microsoft Scripting Runtime Library has been added.

Creating an FSO Object

Creating an FSO object is simple, follow the below steps to do this:

• In the VBA editor navigate to “Insert” > “Module”.

• Now in the module window type “Public FSO As New FileSystemObject”.
• This will create an object of FileSystemObject with the name FSO.

After this, you can simply access the FileSystemObject’s methods using the FSO object.

6 Practical Examples of accessing FileSystemObject

Now let’s move to some practical examples of FSO:

Example 1: Use FSO to find the total free space of a drive.

Below is the code to do this:

'Creating a FileSystemObject 
Public FSO As New FileSystemObject 
Sub DiskSpace() 
Dim drv As Drive 
Dim Space As Double 
Set drv = FSO.GetDrive("C:") 'Creating the the Drive 
object Space = drv.FreeSpace 
Space = Space / 1073741824 'converting bytes to GB 
Space = WorksheetFunction.Round(Space, 2) 'Rounding 
MsgBox "C: has free space = " & Space & " GB" 
End Sub

Explanation: In this code first we have created a Drive object using ‘GetDrive’ Method and then we have used its ‘FreeSpace’ property to fetch the free space.

Finally, we have displayed the free space using a message box.

Note that there are two properties to fetch the free space of a drive i.e. drv.FreeSpace and drv.AvailableSpace.

Example 2: Check if a folder exists or not. If the folder doesn’t exists then create that folder.

Below is the code:

'Creating a FileSystemObject 
Public FSO As New FileSystemObject 
Sub ChkFolder() 
Dim Fldr_name As String 
Fldr_name = InputBox("Enter the path of the folder to check :") 
If Len(Fldr_name) > 0 
Then If FSO.FolderExists(Fldr_name) = True Then 
MsgBox "Folder Exists!" 
Else FSO.CreateFolder (Fldr_name) 
MsgBox ("Folder Created!") 
End If Else MsgBox "Wrong Input" 
End If 
End Sub

Explanation: In the code, we have used an InputBox function to get the path of the folder from the user. After this using the If statement along with FolderExists the method, we have checked whether that folder is present or not. If the folder is not present then we create that folder using the CreateFolder method.

Note: CreateFoldermethod will only create a single folder at a time. So, if you supply an argument “C:\Folder1\Folder2\Folder3” to it then it will only create the Folder3 inside Folder2. But if Folder2 doesn’t exist then it will throw a path not found an error.

Example 3:  Write a code using FSO to copy a folder from one location to another.

Below is the code to accomplish this:

'Creating a FileSystemObject Public FSO As New FileSystemObject Sub CopyFolder() FSO.CopyFolder "C:\Source-Folder\", "D:\Destination-Folder\", True MsgBox "Copying Done!" End Sub

Explanation: In the code, we have used the CopyFolder method of FSO, this method accepts three arguments:

• Source Path
• Destination path
• A Boolean argument to specify Overwrite Existing.

Example 4: Using FileSystemObject fetch the Temp directory, System folder, and Windows folder.

To do this we can use the below code:

'Creating a FileSystemObject 
Public FSO As New FileSystemObject 
Sub GetFolderpath() 
Dim Windows_Fldr As String 
Dim System_Fldr As String 
Dim Temp_Fldr As String 
Windows_Fldr = FSO.GetSpecialFolder(0) 
System_Fldr = FSO.GetSpecialFolder(1) 
Temp_Fldr = FSO.GetSpecialFolder(2) 
MsgBox ("Windows folder path = " & Windows_Fldr & vbNewLine & _ "System folder path = " & System_Fldr & vbNewLine & _ "Temp folder path = " & Temp_Fldr) 
End Sub

Explanation: In the code, we have used the GetSpecialFolder method of FSO, this method accepts a single numerical argument i.e. 0-2.

• FSO.GetSpecialFolder(0) – Fetches the path of Windows Folder.
• FSO.GetSpecialFolder(1) – Fetches the path of System Folder.
• FSO.GetSpecialFolder(2) – Fetches the path of the Local Temporary folder.

Example 5: Create a text file, write some content to it, then read the file, and finally delete the file.

Below is the code to accomplish this:

'Creating a FileSystemObject Public 
FSO As New FileSystemObject 
Sub CreateFile() 
Dim txtstr As TextStream 
Dim FileName As String 
Dim FileContent As String 
Dim File As File 

FileName = "C:\TestDirectory\File.txt" 'File to be created

'Creating a file and writing content to it 
FileContent = InputBox("Enter the File Content") 
If Len(FileContent) > 0 Then 
Set txtstr = FSO.CreateTextFile(FileName, True, True) 
txtstr.Write FileContent 
txtstr.Close 
End If 

' Reading from the file that we have just created 
If FSO.FileExists(FileName) Then 
Set File = FSO.GetFile(FileName) 
Set txtstr = File.OpenAsTextStream(ForReading, TristateUseDefault) 
MsgBox txtstr.ReadAll txtstr.Close 

' Finally Deleting the File 
File.Delete (True) 
End If 
End Sub

Explanation: This code first creates a text file, adds content to it, then reads it, displays it using a message box, and finally deletes that file.

Example 6: Write a VBA Code that can iterate all the files present inside a folder and also fetches their size and modified date.

The following code can accomplish this task:

'Creating a FileSystemObject 
Public FSO As New FileSystemObject 
Sub ListFiles() 
'Declaring variables 
Dim objFolder As Folder 
Dim objFile As File 
Dim strPath As String 
Dim NextRow As Long 

'Specify the path of the folder 
strPath = "C:\Users\Aniee\Desktop\ExcelTrick\ " 

'Create the object of this folder 
Set objFolder = FSO.GetFolder(strPath) 

'Check if the folder is empty or not
If objFolder.Files.Count = 0 Then 
MsgBox "No files were found...", vbExclamation 
Exit Sub 
End If 

'Adding Column names for A, B, and C 
Cells(1, "A").Value = "File Name" 
Cells(1, "B").Value = "Size" 
Cells(1, "C").Value = "Modified Date/Time" 

'Find the next available row 
NextRow = ActiveSheet.Cells(Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row + 1 
'Loop through each file in the folder 
For Each objFile In objFolder.Files 

'List the name, size, and date/time of the current file 
Cells(NextRow, 1).Value = objFile.Name 
Cells(NextRow, 2).Value = objFile.Size 
Cells(NextRow, 3).Value = objFile.DateLastModified 

'Find the next row NextRow = NextRow + 1 
Next objFile 
End Sub

Explanation: In this code, we have created a Folder object and then we are iterating all its files using For Each loop. From the file object, we are fetching the Name, Size and DateLastModified properties and finally we are writing them to the active worksheet. So, this was all about FileSystemObject and how to use it in VBA. Do share your comments related to the topic.