I need to write 5 words in a text file without owerwriting the existing
words.
each word must be separated by a coma.

a file contains :

mike;mikie;22;france;student
flora;florie;19;spain;employee

i need to insert : name;surname;age;country;job

then it will be like this  :

name;surname;age;country;job
mike;mikie;22;france;student
flora;florie;19;spain;employee

but the program has to detect if the first line
(name;surname;age;country;job) is already inserted. If it is, vd does
nothing. if not, then vb inserts this line without overwriting the other
lines.

please help. very important for me. thanks. mike

There are a couple of ways to do this.

here is one way

Private Sub CheckFile(ByVal FilePath As String)
    Dim iFnum as Integer
    Dim iPos    as Integer
    Dim strFileText As String

    iFnum = FreeFile

    Open FilePath For Input As iFnum
    strFileText = Input(LOF(iFnum),#iFnum)
    Close #iFnum

    If Len(strFileText ) <> 0 then
        iPos = Instr(1,strFileText,"name;surname;age;country;job")
        If iPos = 0 then
            strFileText = "name;surname;age;country;job" & vbCrLf &
strFileText
        End If
        iFnum = FreeFile
        Open FilePath For Output As iFnum
        Print #iFnum, strFileText
        Close #iFnum
    End If
End Sub

Regards,

Andrew