CSV viewer and editor

CSV (comma-separated values) is the universal export format for bank statements, online stores, CRMs, analytics tools and databases. But double-clicking a CSV does not always go well: Excel may split columns wrongly, mangle accented characters, or turn ZIP codes and long numbers into something else.

This viewer opens the file as plain text and shows it as a table exactly as it is. It detects the delimiter (comma, semicolon, tab or pipe) and the encoding: UTF-8, or Windows-1252 for files from older Windows software. You see the number of rows and columns at a glance. Files up to 50 MB can be opened, and large tables are shown 500 rows per page.

The file stays on your device. Your browser reads it; nothing is uploaded to a server.

CSV is simple, but a few rules (described in RFC 4180) explain most problems:

• Each line is one record, and the first line is usually the header with column names.
• Values are separated by a delimiter, normally a comma. Countries that use a comma as the decimal mark often use semicolons instead.
• A value that contains the delimiter, a double quote or a line break must be wrapped in double quotes.
• A double quote inside a quoted value is written twice: "He said ""hi""".
• There are no data types: every value is text. Whether 00123 stays text or becomes the number 123 depends on the program that opens the file.
• Line endings may be Windows (CRLF) or Unix (LF); this viewer accepts both and saves with CRLF, which Excel prefers.

• Search filters rows that contain your text in any column.
• Sort by clicking a column header; click again to reverse. Numbers sort as numbers, so 9 comes before 10, and values like 1,250 and $72,500 are understood.
• Edit any cell by clicking into it.
• Add a row at the end, or delete a row with the × button.
• First row is a header can be switched off if your file has no header row; columns are then named Column 1, Column 2 and so on.
• If the columns look wrong, pick a different delimiter and the table is re-read.

The BOM (byte order mark) is an invisible marker at the start of the file that tells Excel the file is UTF-8. Without it, Excel on Windows may show é instead of é. If you already have a file with garbled characters, the text encoding fixer can usually repair it.

• Leading zeros: Excel turns 02134 into 2134. This viewer keeps the text as it is, so you can check and fix values before importing elsewhere.
• Long numbers: credit card-length IDs and tracking numbers become 1.23457E+15 in Excel. Here they stay intact.
• Commas inside values: fields containing the delimiter must be wrapped in double quotes, like "Brown, David". The viewer reads and writes these correctly.
• Line breaks inside a cell are allowed if the field is quoted, but some programs cannot import them. Search for them before handing the file on.

Need to convert between JSON and CSV in bulk? Use the JSON to CSV converter.