Text to CSV Converter

How to use the Text to CSV Converter

1. 1Paste your text into the left box, one row per line.
2. 2Choose what separates the values: two or more spaces, any spaces, a tab, a pipe, a comma, a colon or your own text.
3. 3Decide whether to trim spaces, skip empty lines and fill short rows.
4. 4Check the CSV in the right box and the row and column count under it.
5. 5Press Copy or Download to save it as text.csv and open it in your spreadsheet.

When you need this

Many programs output tables as plain text: log files, command line tools, bank statements pasted from a web page, notes typed in a chat. Spreadsheets cannot import them directly because the values are separated by spaces, not by a comma. Converting the text to CSV is the quickest way to sort, filter and chart the data.

Choosing the right separator

Two or more spaces works well for text that was aligned in columns, because single spaces inside values survive. Any spaces is right when each value has no spaces of its own. Tabs usually come from spreadsheets or databases. Pipes and colons are common in configuration files and logs.

• Aligned columns: two or more spaces
• Words without spaces inside: any spaces
• Copied from a spreadsheet: tab
• Log lines and configs: pipe or colon
• Anything else: custom text

Quoting and special characters

A comma inside a value would break the CSV, so such values are quoted. Quotes inside a value are doubled. Line breaks cannot appear because the text is split by line first, so every line becomes one row. Trimming removes accidental spaces at the start and end of each value.

A quick example

Paste the three lines Name, City and Age with two spaces between the columns, then Ann, New York and 31, then Bob, Rome and 27. The result is a CSV with three rows and three columns, New York stays in one cell and the file opens in Excel with proper columns.

Phone and computer

On a phone, paste the text from a message or note, copy the result and paste it into a spreadsheet app. On a computer, you can also download a file. Large texts of several hundred thousand lines work, but very large ones may take a moment to show.

Good to know

Header rows are not treated specially: the first line is simply the first row. If values use different numbers of spaces to align columns, the two-or-more-spaces choice may split some lines wrongly; then use a custom separator or edit the text first. Encoding is plain text, so accents are kept. To go back to plain text use the CSV to Text Converter, and for tab files use the Text to TSV Converter.

Features

• Nine ways to split a line
• Correct CSV quoting for commas and quotes
• Trim spaces and skip empty lines
• Fill short rows so every row is equally wide
• Row and column count
• Private: nothing leaves your browser

Frequently asked questions