Removing characters with .Replace in VBA for Excel

Question

The following function was given to me via an answer that I asked earlier today.

What I'm trying to do is to remove a character from a string in Excel using VBA. However, whenever the function runs, it ends up erasing the value stored and returning a #!VALUE error. I cannot seem to figure out what is going on. Anyone mind explaining an alternative:

Function ReplaceAccentedCharacters(S As String) As String
    Dim I As Long

With WorksheetFunction
For I = 1 To Len(S)
    Select Case Asc(Mid(S, I, 1))
        ' Extraneous coding removed. Leaving the examples which 
        ' do work and the one that is causing the problem.
        Case 32
            S = .Replace(S, I, 1, "-")
        Case 94
            S = .Replace(S, I, 1, "/")

        ' This is the coding that is generating the error.
        Case 34
            S = .Replace(S, I, 1, "")
        End Select

    Next I

End With

ReplaceAccentedCharacters = S

End Function

When the string contains a " (or character code 34 in Decimal, 22 in Hexadecimal... I used both) it is supposed to remove the quotation mark. However, instead, Excel ignores it, and still returns the " mark anyway.

I then tried to go ahead and replace the .Replace() clause with another value.

        Case 34
            S = .Replace(S, I, 1, "/")
        End Select

Using the code above, the script indeed does replace the " with a /.

I ended up finding the following example here in Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/a/7386565/692250

And in the answer given, I see the same exact code example similar to the one that I gave and nothing. Excel is still ignoring the quotation mark. I even went so far as to expand the definition with curly braces and still did not get anything.

Answer 1

This function was designed to replace one character with another. It was not designed to replace a character with nothing. What happens when you try to replace a character with nothing is that the Counter for iterating through the word will now look (at the last iteration) for a character position that is greater than the length of the word. That returns nothing, and when you try to determine ASC(<nothing>) an error occurs. Other errors in the replacement routine will also occur when the length of the string is changed while the code is running

To modify the routine to replace a character with nothing, I would suggest the following:

In the Case statements:

Case 34
        S = .Replace(S, I, 1, Chr(1))

And in the assignment statement:

ReplaceAccentedCharacters = Replace(S, Chr(1), "")

Note that VBA Replace is different from Worksheetfunction Replace

Answer 2

Try this:

Function blah(S As String) As String
    Dim arr, i

    'array of [replace, with], [replace, with], etc
    arr = Array(Chr(32), "-", Chr(94), "/", Chr(34), "")

    For i = LBound(arr) To UBound(arr) Step 2
        S = Replace(S, arr(i), arr(i + 1))
    Next i

    blah = S
End Function