ViewCSVTo change a CSV delimiter, open the file and pick the New delimiter. A semicolon file is suggested as comma output and a comma file as semicolon output, the two most common switches. To change the encoding, choose the Output encoding, for example UTF-8 with BOM (for Excel) when Excel shows accents as é. Quotes and Line endings cover the rest of the file’s syntax; the preview shows the result and Download CSV saves it. Every value is written exactly as it was read, so 00731 keeps its zeros and 34,90 stays 34,90. The file is processed in your browser and never uploaded.
How to change a CSV delimiter or encoding
- Open a
.csv,.tsvor.txtfile, drop it on the tool, or paste rows. The input delimiter is detected; if it is guessed wrong, or the file is in a legacy encoding such as Windows-1252 or Shift_JIS, set it under Import settings. - Pick the New delimiter: Comma ,, Semicolon ;, Tab or Pipe |. Then choose Quotes and Line endings.
- Choose the Output encoding and select Download CSV, or Copy the text. The encoding applies to the downloaded file; Copy puts the text on the clipboard.
To rewrite several files the same way, choose Batch: convert several files. Each file is read with automatic delimiter detection and a header row, converted with the current settings, and the results download together as one ZIP.
Change how the file is written, or fix its values?
This tool changes only the file’s syntax: delimiter, quotes, line endings and encoding. If the values themselves need work, such as spaces around values, empty or duplicate rows, N/A placeholders or letter case, use Clean CSV data first, then come back here if the receiving program also needs another delimiter or encoding.
To rename, reorder or remove columns, use Rename and reorder CSV columns. To find ragged rows or a quote that never closes before an import, run Validate CSV: a broken quote stops the import with an error naming the record, and reformatting can’t repair it.
Delimiter, quote, line-ending and encoding options
| Only where needed | Quotes a value only when it contains the delimiter, a double quote or a line break, as RFC 4180 requires, and also when it starts or ends with a space, so readers that trim fields keep the space. Quotes inside a value are doubled (""). This is the default. |
|---|---|
| Every value | Wraps every field, including the header and empty cells, in double quotes. |
| Every value except numbers | Quotes everything that is not a plain number. -12.5, +3 and 00731 stay bare; text, dates, 34,90 and empty cells ("") are quoted. Some import tools use the quotes to tell text from numbers. |
| Line endings | Windows (CRLF) (the RFC 4180 form and the default) or Unix/macOS (LF). Every record, including the last, ends with the chosen line break. Line breaks inside a quoted value are kept as they were. |
| Include the header row | Turn it off to write data rows only. If the file was imported without a header, the generated Column 1, Column 2… names are written unless you turn this off. |
| Protect against spreadsheet formulas | Off by default here. When on, values starting with =, +, -, @, a tab or a carriage return get a leading ' so a spreadsheet shows them as text; plain numbers such as -12.5 are unchanged, and the tool reports how many values it changed. |
| UTF-8 | No byte-order mark. Right for most databases, scripts and web tools. |
| UTF-8 with BOM (for Excel) | Adds the EF BB BF byte-order mark so Excel on Windows opens accented and non-Latin text correctly. |
| UTF-16 LE | Little-endian with a byte-order mark, for older Windows tools that expect it. |
| Windows-1252 | The legacy Western European code page. It stores € and accented Latin letters, but not characters such as 日; if a value contains one, the download stops and names the characters instead of writing ?. |
What changes and what doesn’t
- Values are never trimmed, retyped or rounded. Changing a semicolon file to commas doesn’t turn
34,90into34.90; it quotes it as"34,90"because the value now contains the delimiter. - Quoted delimiters, doubled quotes and multiline cells are parsed first and written again with the new quoting, so the record count stays the same.
- A row with more values than the header gets extra columns named
Column 4,Column 5…; a shorter row is padded with empty values. The import warning tells you how many rows were uneven. - Blank headers become
Column 3and repeated onesname (2), both in the output and in the preview. - The output delimiter is one of the four offered. A double quote or a line break can never be a delimiter.
When Excel still shows one column or broken accents
- Excel puts everything in column A. Excel uses the list separator from your regional settings. In regions with a decimal comma it expects semicolons, so choose Semicolon ;; otherwise choose Comma ,.
- Accents show as é in Excel. Choose UTF-8 with BOM (for Excel) and download again.
- The Windows-1252 download fails. The message lists characters that code page cannot store. Remove them, or choose UTF-8.
- The input looks wrong before you change anything. The input delimiter or encoding was misread; set them under Import settings and open the file again. Check the parsed rows on the Input tab.
Limits and large files
Files up to 25 MB, 100,000 rows, 250 columns and 2 million cells open with a live preview. Larger files are processed in streaming mode: the file is read twice in chunks, once to find the widest record and once to write the output, and the download covers every row. Copy isn’t available for those files, and a single output is capped at 4 GB.
In streaming mode the file is decoded automatically (UTF-8, or UTF-16 when it starts with a byte-order mark) and the first row is treated as the header. Large files in a legacy encoding should be converted to UTF-8 first.
The work runs in a background worker in this tab; Cancel stops it. For a tab-separated file with TSV-specific escaping, use CSV to TSV.
Example: a semicolon export rewritten with commas
A semicolon export with decimal commas and a doubled quote, reformatted with the defaults it gets (comma delimiter, Only where needed, Windows (CRLF)). Values containing the new delimiter are quoted; nothing else changes.
sku;name;price 00731;Desk lamp, brass;34,90 00732;"Cable ""tidy"" set";4,50
sku,name,price 00731,"Desk lamp, brass","34,90" 00732,"Cable ""tidy"" set","4,50"
Questions and answers
How do I change a comma-separated file to semicolons for Excel?
Open it, keep the suggested Semicolon ; delimiter, and choose UTF-8 with BOM (for Excel) if it contains accents or non-Latin text. Values that contain semicolons are quoted automatically.
Does reformatting change numbers or dates?
No. The tool rewrites delimiters, quotes, line endings and encoding only. 34,90, 2026-03-01 and 00731 are written exactly as read. To convert decimal commas or date formats, edit the values in the CSV editor.
Should I choose CRLF or LF?
CRLF is the line ending RFC 4180 specifies and what Windows tools expect. LF suits Unix tools, Git repositories and most scripts. RFC 4180 itself notes that some implementations use other line breaks, so check what the receiving tool documents.