Since I was already working on Get a File Hash using VBA it made sense to look into how one could hash a string directly.

The basic principle remains identical, in the larger sense, that is I use VBA to run a PowerShell script and return the generated Hash, but this time we need to use the -InputStream parameter to be able to use a string directly. I won’t bore you with the detail, you can review the code for yourself.

'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Procedure : PS_GetStringHash
' Author    : Daniel Pineault, CARDA Consultants Inc.
' Website   : http://www.cardaconsultants.com
' Purpose   : Returns the specified Hash for the supplied string.
'             Utilizes PowerShell to perform the Hashing.
' Copyright : The following is release as Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
'             (CC BY-SA 4.0) - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
' Req'd Refs: Late Binding  -> none required
' Dependencies: Requires PS_GetOutput()
'
' Input Variables:
' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
' sInput            : String to get the Hash of
' sHashAlgorithm    : Algorithm to use for the Hashing: MACTripleDES, MD5, RIPEMD160
'                     SHA1, SHA256, SHA384 or SHA512
'
' Usage:
' ~~~~~~
' PS_GetStringHash("Testing The Code A Little Bit", "MD5")
'   Returns -> D2A8E6028DEDC41F87E133E036DCCDE2
' PS_GetStringHash("Testing The Code A Little Bit", "RIPEMD160")
'   Returns -> 2037F4F018759E0EC813213CA36ACC20236891D8
' PS_GetStringHash("Testing The Code A Little Bit", "SHA256")
'   Returns -> FB58DAE56E917CD5F5B4A5DEFDEB46B0222E09C660226A69D19381442ABBA51D
'
' Revision History:
' Rev       Date(yyyy-mm-dd)        Description
' **************************************************************************************
' 1         2021-10-06              Initial Public Release
' 2         2022-11-22              Remove trailing vbCrLf per comment by Leslie Desser
'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Function PS_GetStringHash(sInput As String, sHashAlgorithm As String) As String
    Dim sPSCmd                As String

    On Error GoTo Error_Handler

    Select Case sHashAlgorithm
        Case "MACTripleDES", "MD5", "RIPEMD160", "SHA1", "SHA256", "SHA384", "SHA512"
        Case Else
            MsgBox "Unknown Algorithm", vbCritical Or vbOKOnly, "Operation Aborted"
            GoTo Error_Handler_Exit
    End Select
    sPSCmd = "(Get-FileHash -InputStream ([System.IO.MemoryStream]::" & _
             "New([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes('" & sInput & "'))) " & _
             "-Algorithm " & sHashAlgorithm & ").Hash"
    PS_GetStringHash = PS_GetOutput(sPSCmd)
    PS_GetStringHash = Replace(PS_GetStringHash, vbCrLf, "")

Error_Handler_Exit:
    On Error Resume Next
    Exit Function

Error_Handler:
    MsgBox "The following error has occured" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Number: " & Err.Number & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Source: PS_GetStringHash" & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Description: " & Err.Description & _
           Switch(Erl = 0, "", Erl <> 0, vbCrLf & "Line No: " & Erl) _
           , vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "An Error has Occured!"
    Resume Error_Handler_Exit
End Function

So, as you can see, using VBA, we can now employ some very powerful PowerShell cmdlets. Thus, we can execute a, one line, PowerShell cmd and get what we are after!

As explained in the PowerShell Get-FileHash documentation, we can use any of 7 different hashing algorithms:

• MACTripleDES
• MD5
• RIPEMD160
• SHA1
• SHA256
• SHA384
• SHA512

thus making this function quite versatile.

A Few Resources on the Subject

• Get-FileHash (Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility) – PowerShell | Microsoft Docs