current position on the current line

ok my question is that i have a textbox on a worksheet in excel and i want to be able to find out what the current position on the current line that im on. here is what im trying to do. ok i am first off converting a file from a emacs file to beable to be read and looked at in windows. and the tab stops to look right in windows. in emacs it make the tabs 8 spaces long and for some reason they are only like 5-6 or so in the textbox. and i want to beable to take a chr(9) which is tab and replace it with space(8) but here is where the problem is.

when you are in the first space on a line it and hit tab in emacs it moves over 8. then of you are on the 2nd it moves over 7 and goes to the same spot as the last tab this happens all the way over to space 8 where it starts over. and i need to be able to detect want spot the chr(9) was found on so i know how many spaces to go over. well hopefully someone can help. i currently dont have any code writen really. all i have is the code the replaces all chr(9) with space(8) if you want i can post that so you can look at how i do stuff.

well thanks for your help and hope you read this soon thanks :)

VB Code:

'***********************************************'
' code that replaces the chr(9)'s with space(8) '
'***********************************************'
        Dim curpos1 As Integer
        thispos1 = 0
        thispos1 = 0
        startpos1 = 1
        startpos2 = 1
        'chr(9) replacing with 8 spaces
        Do While True
            thispos1 = InStr(startpos1, strFileRecord, Chr(9))
            If thispos1 = 0 Then Exit Do
            strFileRecord = Left(strFileRecord, thispos1 - 1) & space(8) & Mid(strFileRecord, thispos1 + 8)
            startpos1 = thispos1 + 1
        Loop
'***********************************************'
' code that replaces the chr(9)'s with space(8) '
'***********************************************'

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