CSV Formatter
A CSV file that "does not work" almost always has one of two problems: a row with one column too many or too few, or a quote that was never closed, dumping the rest of the file into a single field. This tool reads your CSV row by row, compares each row’s column count with the first row, and reports the row number as soon as there is a mismatch. The separator is detected automatically — comma, semicolon or tab — and preserved in the output, so a file from Excel does not quietly change shape. Which character was detected is shown next to the status message. At the end you get consistently quoted CSV back: only fields containing the separator, a quote or a line break are wrapped in quotes, and quotes inside a field are doubled — exactly as the convention prescribes. Everything happens locally in your browser: your data never reaches our server, is never logged and never stored. Free and unlimited to use, including commercially — no account, no licence, no limits.
What people use this for
name,city,revenue Acme Ltd,Rotterdam,124950Field containing a comma → automatically wrapped in quotesRow with too few columns → message naming the row number
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Does the tool handle semicolons as a separator?
Yes. The tool looks at the first line and counts — outside quotes — how often the comma, the semicolon and the tab occur; the most frequent one wins. That is necessary because Excel exports with semicolons by default in locales where the comma is the decimal separator. Which character was detected is shown next to the status message. The output uses the same character as the input, so your file does not quietly change shape and can go straight back into Excel. If no separator occurs at all, the tool falls back to the comma.
When is a field wrapped in quotes?
Only when it needs to be: when the field itself contains the separator, a quote or a line break. All other fields stay bare. That is the common convention and produces the smallest, most readable files. If a field contains a quote, it is doubled inside the quoted field — so a field holding 5" becomes "5""". It looks odd but it is exactly what every CSV reader expects.
Why do I get a message about an unclosed quote?
As soon as a quote is opened somewhere, the tool reads everything that follows as text inside that field — including commas and line breaks — until the closing quote arrives. If it never does, the rest of the file becomes one giant field and the structure can no longer be determined. This is the most common cause of a CSV that shifts completely in a spreadsheet. Find the row number where it goes wrong and check whether there is a quote in the text there that should have been doubled.
Are empty rows and the header row preserved?
Completely empty rows are skipped — they carry no data and only cause false column warnings. The header row is treated as an ordinary row and sets the expected column count for every row after it. If your file has no header row that works just as well: the first data row then becomes the reference.