VBA native file system functions fail with Unicode directory and file paths

[GCuser99]

I've been working on SeleniumVBA functionality for proper handling of Unicode directory and file paths. In the process, I came across the following surprise (to me).

Apparently on my system, native VBA7 functionality (Excel 365) blows up when trying to access/manipulate file names and paths that contain non-ANSI characters. In VBA, the following code never makes it past the MKDir command at runtime, and will also fail on Open, Kill, Dir, and RmDir commands.

I naively thought that VBA strings, represented as Unicode, would work with native file commands, but apparently not.

Can anyone else confirm that the following code fails in VBA? Thx!

PS: FileSystemObject and ADODB stream properly handle Unicode directory and file paths - so it is not too high an expectation for native VBA functionality to do the same, I think. But wanted to make sure that it is not something unique to my setup.

Sub test_unicode()
    Dim folderPath As String
    Dim filePath As String
    Dim fileNum As Long

    'create a folder with non-Ansi (unicode) characters

    folderPath = Environ("USERPROFILE") & "\Documents\" _
       & ChrW(&H259) & ChrW(&H259) & ChrW(&H259)

    MkDir folderPath

    'create a file with non-Ansi (unicode) characters
    'in the file name

    filePath = folderPath & "\" & "test" _
       & ChrW(&H278) & ".txt"

    fileNum = FreeFile
    Open filePath For Output As #fileNum
    Print #fileNum, "test line"
    Close #fileNum

    'check if success
    Debug.Print Dir(filePath) <> vbNullString

    'now clean up
    Kill filePath
    RmDir folderPath
End Sub

[GHRyunosuke]

Yes, the above code fails. Tested with my system (office excel 365 Japanese Version + Windows 11 Japanese Version)

[GCuser99]

Thanks for confirming @GHRyunosuke. With the latest release, I'm going to close this one....