Why Random Access Files?
Why/when would you use Random Access Files in VBA? Ironically they're hardly random! They're very specific but not sequential ;)
Unlike working with CSV or text files which are typically read (and written) sequentially in their entirety (before you do anything with the data) Random Access allows you to read in (or write out) specific records as you need them.
So, for instances where you're working with smaller or specific sets of data for a calculation or report Random Access Files work very well and have the following advantages:-
- resulting spreadsheet/s can be a lot smaller in size (don't need ALL records loaded)
- targeted reading / writing of records is fast
- data is secure - The structure of records and the data types result in records having an encryption of sorts so the data has little chance of being used/misused outside the spreadsheet.
[More to follow]
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