How does it know which delimiter my file uses?

By trying each candidate and seeing which produces the most consistent column count across the first twenty lines. Counting occurrences alone gets it wrong constantly — a European CSV separated by semicolons still contains commas inside its decimal numbers, often more of them than semicolons.

What does “rows have a different number of columns” mean?

That some rows have more or fewer fields than the widest one. Occasionally that's legitimate — a trailing empty column. Usually it means a delimiter appears unquoted inside a field somewhere, so that row got split into too many pieces. The tool pads the short rows so the table still lines up, but the note is a warning worth reading.

Is there a size limit?

Only your machine's memory. The table shows the first 500 rows to keep the page responsive, but Copy and Download always give you every row. Very large files will make the page pause while it parses, since it re-parses as you edit.

CSV Viewer

Paste a CSV and read it as a table instead of counting commas. The delimiter is detected for you — comma, semicolon, tab or pipe — and quoted fields are parsed properly, which means an address containing a comma stays in one column and a quoted field containing a line break stays in one cell. It also tells you when rows have different column counts, which is almost always a sign of an unescaped delimiter somewhere.

Your text

Delimiter

First row is a header

Trim spaces around each value

Off by default because a leading space can be real data. Turn it on for a file exported with padding.

Result

Nothing is uploaded — this tool runs inside your browser, so your files never leave your device.

Help us improve

Why use this tool

Detects comma, semicolon, tab and pipe automatically
Handles quoted fields containing commas, quotes and line breaks
Flags rows whose column count doesn't match the rest
Runs in your browser — a CSV of customer records is never uploaded

How it works

1Paste your CSV, or open the file in a text editor and copy it in.
2Leave the delimiter on automatic unless it guesses wrong.
3Read the table — and the note underneath if any rows look ragged.

CSV Viewer — frequently asked questions

Because fields are allowed to contain commas as long as they're quoted, and real data is full of them — addresses, product descriptions, anything with a list in it. `"Loves commas, apparently"` is one field, not two. A splitter shifts every column after it, which is why a spreadsheet imported that way looks fine for two hundred rows and then goes wrong.

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