Different applications export delimited files with different separators. Excel on European systems often uses semicolons, MySQL exports use commas, and many Unix tools prefer tabs. This tool re-parses your file with the original delimiter and re-serialises it with the new one, properly handling quoted fields. Runs entirely in your browser.
Delimited text files use a separator character between fields — commas in CSV, tabs in TSV, semicolons in many European Excel exports, and pipes in some log formats. Converting between them is a frequent data-wrangling step when files must move between systems with different expectations. This converter handles all common delimiters and correctly preserves quoted fields.
Excel exports in European locales often use semicolons because commas serve as decimal separators. Log aggregation tools may output pipe-delimited data. Database exports default to tab-separated. When a CSV file from one system needs to be imported into another, a delimiter mismatch causes every row to appear as a single field. Converting takes seconds here — no spreadsheet software required.
RFC 4180 defines the standard CSV format: fields may be enclosed in double quotes; if a field contains the delimiter, a newline, or a double quote, it must be quoted; a double quote inside a quoted field is escaped by doubling it ("" represents one ").
Excel uses a "list separator" from Windows regional settings as its CSV delimiter (often a semicolon in European locales). A comma-delimited CSV opened directly in Excel may appear as one column. Use this tool to convert to your locale's expected delimiter, or use Excel's Text Import Wizard.
No — delimiters are single characters. If your data uses multi-character separators like |~|, use Find and Replace on the output after converting to an intermediate single-character delimiter.
Values containing the delimiter must be wrapped in quotes (RFC 4180). This tool adds quotes to affected fields automatically when you change the delimiter. If your input is not properly quoted, ambiguous fields are preserved as-is.
See also CSV Column Tools, CSV to JSON, and the full suite of data format converters.