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CSV → TSV

Convert CSV to TSV online

This direction is usually a relief: tabs almost never appear inside real data, so the output needs far less escaping than the input had. The work is on the way in — reading the quoting rules correctly, including the quoted field that contains a line break.

How to do it

  1. Drop the .csv onto the editor. The delimiter is inferred from the contents, including semicolon-separated input; check that the displayed columns match your file.
  2. Confirm the columns look right. A file with a stray quote usually shows up as one very wide row, and the review panel names it.
  3. Export as TSV. Review the quoted-field setting and any conversion offered: values containing tabs or line breaks need quoting to remain single cells.

Do it in the editor

What usually goes wrong

  • Tabs already inside cells

    Rare, but fatal if ignored. Those cells are flagged before export, and you can strip the tab or keep it quoted — your call, made visibly.

  • A quoted field spanning lines

    A comment or address written across two lines is one cell, not two rows. The parser follows the quoting rather than splitting on newlines.

Check the detected encoding and displayed characters. Without a BOM or valid UTF-8, Windows-1252 is inferred; this does not identify every encoding called ANSI. TSV downloads use UTF-8 and tabs; CSV downloads use UTF-8 and commas. Review the effective record line endings, BOM and final line break in the export dialog. Quotes are rebuilt, and mixed record endings become uniform. Unsafe output is blocked; explicit quoting conversion is offered when it preserves the table, and ambiguous input requires confirmation.