CSV Viewer

Paste tabular text and read it as a proper table — column headings, row numbers and an honest count of what is in the file.

Runs on your deviceDataWorkingNo account needed

What this tool does

CSV Viewer parses the text you paste and draws it as a table, so a wall of commas becomes rows and columns you can scan. Quoted fields are honoured, which is the part a plain split on commas gets wrong: a cell wrapped in double quotes may contain the separator, a line break, or a doubled quote standing for a literal one. With the header box ticked the first row becomes the column labels — a blank label is filled in from its position, so an empty third heading reads column_3, and a name that appears twice picks up a _2 suffix so two columns are never mistaken for each other. Untick the box and the columns are simply labelled Column 1 onwards.

Ragged rows are padded rather than trimmed. The table is made as wide as the longest row in the file, so a row missing its last two fields ends in empty cells instead of sliding values under the wrong headings, and a row carrying more fields than the header adds columns that take positional names rather than being discarded. The summary line beneath the table reports the shape that was actually read: how many rows, how many columns, which of comma, semicolon, tab or pipe was used, and whether what you are looking at is only the first slice of the file.

Rows to show governs drawing, not reading. The whole document is parsed and counted whatever that number says; the setting only decides how many rows are built into the table, and it starts at 500 because every visible row is real markup on the page. Raising it as far as 100,000 is allowed and the tab will feel it. What is drawn is read-only: no column sorting, no filter, no search box, no editing. Copy output returns what is currently drawn as comma-separated CSV, headings on the first line and the row-number column included when that is switched on, so it is a copy of the view rather than of the file, whatever separator the original used.

The parse happens in this browser tab and the text is never uploaded, so pulling the network cable changes nothing about what you see. That also fixes the ceiling: there is no file picker and no drop zone here, so you cannot open CSV files straight from disk, and the clipboard plus the tab's memory decide how much data fits. For a genuinely large export, cut it down first — Data Sampler takes a slice of the rows, Column Extractor keeps only the fields you care about — and look at the result here.

How to use it

  1. Paste the tabular text. Put comma, semicolon, tab or pipe-separated text into the input box. Load sample fills it with seven customer records, one of which hides a comma inside quotes.
  2. Confirm the separator. Detection weighs commas, semicolons, tabs and pipes across the opening lines and takes the most frequent. If the result arrives as one wide column, name the separator yourself instead.
  3. Tell it about the first row. Ticked, those cells become the column headings. Unticked, that row is treated as data and the columns are numbered for you.
  4. Decide how much to draw. Rows to show caps the table without touching the counts. Show row numbers adds a # column, and the trim option strips leading and trailing spaces from every value.
  5. Read the summary, or copy the view. The line under the table gives the row and column totals and the separator that was used. Copy output puts the drawn rows on the clipboard as CSV.

Processing & privacy

Runs on your device. Your file is processed directly in this browser.

Common use cases

Checking an export before you import it

Paste the file and the column headings, the column count and the obviously empty fields are all visible before an importer rejects the batch.

Reading a CSV without a spreadsheet

On a machine with no Excel or Numbers installed, a table view in the browser beats counting commas in a text editor.

Working out why a file looks broken

A European export separated by semicolons opens as a single column almost everywhere. Switching the separator here settles it in seconds.

Checking that quoting survived

Addresses and names containing commas are the usual cause of a shifted column. The table shows at a glance whether the quotes held.

Eyeballing a query result

Rows copied out of a database client or a terminal paste straight in, and the row total says whether you got everything you expected.

Questions

Do the rows leave my machine?
No. CSV Viewer parses the text and builds the table inside this browser tab, so the rows are never transmitted, logged or stored — take the machine offline and it behaves exactly the same.
Can I open a file from my computer?
Not directly. This tool has no file picker and no drop zone, so the rows have to be pasted in, and that makes your clipboard and the tab's memory the real limit on how much you can preview.
Can I sort, filter or search the table?
No. It renders the rows in file order and does nothing else to them. Removing repeated rows is Remove Duplicates, taking a subset of rows is Data Sampler, and choosing columns is Column Extractor.
Why does it show fewer rows than my file has?
Rows to show defaults to 500 and truncates only the drawing — the summary still reports the full count. Raise it as far as 100,000 to see more; each drawn row is a real table row, so a high limit makes the page heavy rather than failing.
Everything landed in one column — why?
The separator was guessed wrongly. Detection counts candidate characters over the first few lines, including any sitting inside quoted text, so a semicolon-separated file whose cells are full of commas can be misread. Choose the separator from the list and the guessing stops.
Some rows are longer than others — what then?
They are padded. The table is as wide as the longest row, short rows finish with empty cells, and columns that only exist in the longer rows are labelled by position instead of being dropped.
Does it change my values?
No. Cells are drawn exactly as the parser read them: nothing is re-formatted as a number, a date or a currency, and leading zeros survive. The only change on offer is the trim option. Truly empty lines are dropped by the parser, though a line of nothing but separators is a real row and stays.
Can I download the table?
Not from here — the page offers no download button at all. Copy output puts the drawn table on the clipboard as comma-separated CSV, headings first and the # column included when row numbers are on; reach for CSV to Excel or CSV to JSON when you want a file back.

Related tools

  • JSON to CSV — Flatten a JSON array into a CSV table.
  • CSV to JSON — Turn a CSV file into structured JSON.
  • CSV to Excel — Convert CSV files into an XLSX workbook.
  • Excel to CSV — Export spreadsheet sheets to CSV.
  • CSV Merge — Combine multiple CSV files with matching columns.
  • CSV Split — Split a large CSV into smaller chunks.