Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Determining the Size of a File.

Determining the Size of a File

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 25, 2026)

One of the nice things about writing macros is that you have the ability to do just about anything you can do using the regular Basic language. For instance, you may want to open and process some file within a macro. Before doing so, you might want to know how large that file is. You can figure this out using the FileLen function in VBA. It returns the length of a specific file, in bytes. You don't even have to open the file first; just provide a file name, and FileLen does the rest. The following is an example:

lFLen = FileLen("TargetFile.txt")

This code determines the length of the TargetFile.txt file, and assigns that value to lFLen. The value returned is a long integer.

Note:

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WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (820) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Determining the Size of a File.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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