International Characters don't function correctly in Macro

[jrfishe1]

Hello,

ArcGIS has a problem where when exporting international characters they get miscoded. I'm trying to write a macro that does a search and replace to correct this, but have found that while the search and replace works correctly (I'm pasting the values into the replace dialog box), the values show up in the macro incorrectly when I record it. For example, lower case phi shows up as f, and when I re-paste it, it still shows up as f. The macro then replaces f rather than phi.

Any tips on how I can get a macro to recognize some of these unusual characters? The list I'm working on is as follows (though some of them don't display correctly here either):
╤ Ñ
╙ Ó
╔ É
Θ é
ß á
φ í
≤ ó
± ñ
· ú
α à
Φ è
Ω ê
ε î
⌠ ô
Σ ä
ⁿ ü
─ Ä
÷ ö
╓ Ŭ
Γ â
╚ È
┼ Å
╬ Î
╪ Ø
▐ Þ
∩ ï
≡ ð
σ å
° ø
⌡ õ

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

The characters you posted are in the range 192-255.

In a blank worksheet enter this formula in A192:

=CHAR(ROW())

and copy down to A193:A255.

In A192 you will get À which you can also get if you hold down Alt and type 0192 on the numeric keypad. But if you hold down Alt and type 192 on the numeric keypad you get └. Why this is has always been a mystery to me - something to do with Unicode I think.

What you could try, having entered the formulas above, is go to column B, and in each cell hold down Alt and type the row number on the numeric keypad. You will then have a list of equivalents, which you could loop through, replacing what's in B with what's in A.

 

[jrfishe1]

Thanks for the help, but while that will get me a more complete list it still doesn't fix the problem I get when I try to create the macro. For example, typing alt+237 in excel gets you lower-case phi (φ), and alt+0237 gets you í. But in the macro editor, alt+237 gets you f. So is there any other way to get characters like φ in the macro editor? Thanks,

Jon

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

This worked for me with the table of characters set up as in my previous post:

Sub Test()
    Dim Sh1 As Worksheet
    Dim RngChars As Range
    Dim Sh2 As Worksheet
    Dim Rng As Range
    Dim Cell As Range
    Set Sh1 = Worksheets("Sheet1")
    Set RngChars = Sh1.Range("A192:A255")
    Set Sh2 = Worksheets("Sheet1")
    Set Rng = Sh2.Range("A1:A2")
    For Each Cell In RngChars
        Rng.Replace What:=Cell.Offset(0, 1).Value, Replacement:=Cell.Value, LookAt:=xlPart
    Next Cell
End Sub

Change the sheet and range references to suit.

 

[jrfishe1]

Thanks! So just to be sure, do I need to insert a sheet with that range of characters into whatever workbook I want to run the macro on? Or is there a way to have it reference one workbook with all of those characters to run on another workbook? Either way it's still a huge time-saver over doing it manually, so thanks again!

 

[Andrew Poulsom]

You can put the sheet in a master workbook along with the following slightly amended code:

Sub Test() 
    Dim Sh1 As Worksheet 
    Dim RngChars As Range 
    Dim Sh2 As Worksheet 
    Dim Rng As Range 
    Dim Cell As Range 
    Set Sh1 = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Sheet1") 
    Set RngChars = Sh1.Range("A192:A255") 
    Set Sh2 = ActiveSheet 
    Set Rng = Sh2.Range("A1:A2") 
    For Each Cell In RngChars 
        Rng.Replace What:=Cell.Offset(0, 1).Value, Replacement:=Cell.Value, LookAt:=xlPart 
    Next Cell 
End Sub

Activate the sheet whose characters you want to replace and run the macro.