How to use the CSV Viewer & Cleaner
Paste or load a CSV file and view it as a clean, sortable, searchable table — without opening Excel and without uploading. The CSV Viewer auto-detects comma, semicolon, tab, and pipe delimiters, handles quoted values and UTF-8 / BOM, lets you remove empty rows, trim whitespace, filter or hide columns, and download the cleaned CSV. Everything runs in your browser, so sensitive exports stay on your machine.
What it does
- Renders CSV as a table with headers, sorting, and search.
- Auto-detects delimiter (comma, semicolon, tab, pipe) and quoting style.
- Handles quoted values with embedded commas, newlines, and escaped quotes (RFC 4180).
- Supports UTF-8 with optional BOM; renders emoji and accented characters correctly.
- Cleanup actions: trim whitespace, remove empty rows, dedupe by column, hide unused columns.
- Copy a column, copy filtered rows, or download the cleaned CSV.
- Send to the CSV ↔ JSON Converter, CSV Compare, or SQL IN Builder.
When to use it
- Inspect a database export, BI dump, or analytics CSV without launching Excel.
- Validate test data exports for QA scenarios.
- Clean a CSV before bulk-import into a database or CRM.
- Look up a specific row or value in a large CSV using search.
- Convert a CSV column into a SQL IN list or a JSON array of values.
- Inspect a vendor data drop for column types and outliers.
How to use it
- Paste your CSV or load a
.csv file.
- The delimiter is auto-detected; change it manually if the table looks wrong (e.g., semicolon-separated European exports).
- Click a column header to sort; type in the search box to filter rows.
- Use Trim whitespace, Remove empty rows, and Dedupe to clean the data.
- Hide columns you do not need with the column toggles.
- Download the cleaned CSV, copy a column as a list, or hand off to a related tool.
Tips & pitfalls
- European CSV exports often use semicolons as the field separator — set the delimiter manually if the table appears as one column.
- Excel-on-Windows expects a UTF-8 BOM — enable it on export if accented characters render incorrectly.
- Quotes inside fields must be doubled (
"") per RFC 4180; the viewer handles this automatically.
- Very large CSVs (multi-million rows) may be slow — preview a subset or split the file.
- Beware of leading zeros in IDs (
007) — copy as text rather than re-importing through Excel, which strips them.
FAQ
- How do I view a CSV file online? Paste it or drop the file in. The CSV Viewer renders it as a sortable, searchable table instantly.
- Does it support semicolon or tab delimiters? Yes — comma, semicolon, tab, pipe, and custom delimiters are supported with auto-detection.
- Is my CSV uploaded? No. Parsing and rendering run entirely in your browser.
- How do I clean a CSV? Use the trim, remove empty rows, dedupe, and column-hide actions, then download the cleaned file.
- Can I convert CSV to JSON? Yes — send the cleaned CSV to the CSV ↔ JSON Converter for typed JSON output.
- What is the row limit? The viewer handles tens of thousands of rows comfortably. For multi-million-row files, split or load into a database.
Runs locally in your browser. No uploads. Share links use an encrypted URL fragment.
