Question

Is there a built-in way to URL encode a string in Excel VBA or do I need to hand roll this functionality?

Answer 1

No, nothing built-in (until Excel 2013 – see this answer).

There are three versions of URLEncode() in this answer.

• A function with UTF-8 support. You should probably use this one (or the alternative implementation by Tom) for compatibility with modern requirements.
• For reference and educational purposes, two functions without UTF-8 support:
  • one found on a third party website, included as-is. (This was the first version of the answer)
  • one optimized version of that, written by me

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A variant that supports UTF-8 encoding and is based on ADODB.Stream (include a reference to a recent version of the ‘Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects’ library in your project):

Public Function URLEncode( _    ByVal StringVal As String, _    Optional SpaceAsPlus As Boolean = False _ ) As String   Dim bytes() As Byte, b As Byte, i As Integer, space As String    If SpaceAsPlus Then space = '+' Else space = '%20'    If Len(StringVal) > 0 Then     With New ADODB.Stream       .Mode = adModeReadWrite       .Type = adTypeText       .Charset = 'UTF-8'       .Open       .WriteText StringVal       .Position = 0       .Type = adTypeBinary       .Position = 3 ' skip BOM       bytes = .Read     End With      ReDim result(UBound(bytes)) As String      For i = UBound(bytes) To 0 Step -1       b = bytes(i)       Select Case b         Case 97 To 122, 65 To 90, 48 To 57, 45, 46, 95, 126           result(i) = Chr(b)         Case 32           result(i) = space         Case 0 To 15           result(i) = '%0' & Hex(b)         Case Else           result(i) = '%' & Hex(b)       End Select     Next i      URLEncode = Join(result, '')   End If End Function 

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This function was found on freevbcode.com:

Public Function URLEncode( _    StringToEncode As String, _    Optional UsePlusRatherThanHexForSpace As Boolean = False _ ) As String    Dim TempAns As String   Dim CurChr As Integer   CurChr = 1    Do Until CurChr - 1 = Len(StringToEncode)     Select Case Asc(Mid(StringToEncode, CurChr, 1))       Case 48 To 57, 65 To 90, 97 To 122         TempAns = TempAns & Mid(StringToEncode, CurChr, 1)       Case 32         If UsePlusRatherThanHexForSpace = True Then           TempAns = TempAns & '+'         Else           TempAns = TempAns & '%' & Hex(32)         End If       Case Else         TempAns = TempAns & '%' & _           Right('0' & Hex(Asc(Mid(StringToEncode, _           CurChr, 1))), 2)     End Select      CurChr = CurChr + 1   Loop    URLEncode = TempAns End Function 

I’ve corrected a little bug that was in there.

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I would use more efficient (~2× as fast) version of the above:

Public Function URLEncode( _    StringVal As String, _    Optional SpaceAsPlus As Boolean = False _ ) As String    Dim StringLen As Long: StringLen = Len(StringVal)    If StringLen > 0 Then     ReDim result(StringLen) As String     Dim i As Long, CharCode As Integer     Dim Char As String, Space As String      If SpaceAsPlus Then Space = '+' Else Space = '%20'      For i = 1 To StringLen       Char = Mid$(StringVal, i, 1)       CharCode = Asc(Char)       Select Case CharCode         Case 97 To 122, 65 To 90, 48 To 57, 45, 46, 95, 126           result(i) = Char         Case 32           result(i) = Space         Case 0 To 15           result(i) = '%0' & Hex(CharCode)         Case Else           result(i) = '%' & Hex(CharCode)       End Select     Next i     URLEncode = Join(result, '')   End If End Function 

Note that neither of these two functions support UTF-8 encoding.