SheetCompareTSV to CSV Converter
Convert a tab-separated file to comma-separated CSV in your browser. No upload, no signup, no data leaves your device.
Drop your file here
Accepts TSV · Runs in your browser. Your file never leaves your device.
TSV (tab-separated values) is the format you reach for when your data contains commas — addresses, free-text notes, anything from a SQL `COPY` dump. The trade-off is that almost no consumer tool wants TSV by default. Excel will open it but call it a "text file," Google Sheets needs an explicit Import → Tab option, and most APIs and BI tools assume CSV. Converting to CSV is usually the path of least friction.
This tool reads your TSV with the same parser SheetCompare uses for diffs, then writes a CSV with proper RFC 4180 quoting — fields that contain commas, double quotes, or newlines get wrapped in quotes and any embedded quotes get doubled. No data is sent to a server; everything runs locally in your browser.
Three steps, no signup
- 1
Drop your TSV
Drag a .tsv file into the box above, or click to pick one. Tabs in the data are treated as the delimiter; the first row is treated as headers.
- 2
We re-quote for CSV
Cells containing commas, double quotes, or newlines get wrapped in double quotes. Embedded quotes are escaped by doubling. Tabs inside cells are preserved verbatim.
- 3
Download the .csv
A standards-compliant CSV is ready instantly. Open it in Excel, Google Sheets, or pipe it into any tool that expects CSV.
Frequently asked questions
- When should I keep the file as TSV instead of converting?
- If your data is full of commas — addresses, free-text fields, monetary values written like "1,234.56" — TSV is genuinely safer because tabs are far less likely to appear inside cells than commas. Database dumps and data-warehouse exports often default to TSV for this reason. Convert to CSV when the consumer (Excel's default open behavior, a CSV-only API, a BI tool) demands it.
- How does the converter handle commas inside cell values?
- Cells containing commas (or double quotes, or newlines) get wrapped in double quotes per RFC 4180. So a TSV cell containing `Smith, John` becomes `"Smith, John"` in the CSV output. Excel and every other compliant CSV reader handle this correctly — the comma stays inside the cell, not as a column separator.
- What about embedded double quotes in cell values?
- Doubled. A TSV cell containing `She said "hi"` becomes `"She said ""hi"""` in the CSV — wrapped in quotes, with each internal quote turned into two quotes. This is the RFC 4180 rule and what Excel emits when it saves a CSV.
- Do embedded newlines survive the conversion?
- Yes. Cells with newlines get wrapped in quotes, which keeps the newline inside the cell on import. Excel and Google Sheets display these as multi-line cells. Note that some downstream tools (especially older Unix scripts that count newlines as row separators) won't handle multi-line cells well — if that's your target, strip newlines first.
- Will Excel open the resulting CSV cleanly?
- On English/US locale Excel, double-clicking a .csv opens it as comma-separated and works directly. On regional locales where the "List separator" is a semicolon (most of Europe), double-clicking can split on the wrong character — use Data → From Text/CSV to pick the comma explicitly, or change your Windows regional list separator. This is an Excel quirk, not a problem with the file.
- Are headers preserved exactly?
- Yes — the first row of your TSV becomes the first row of the CSV, with the same column names in the same order. We don't rename, lowercase, or strip whitespace. If your headers contain commas they get quoted just like any other cell.
- What encoding is the output?
- UTF-8 without a BOM. This is the modern default and works everywhere except in older Excel-on-Windows workflows that expect a BOM to recognize UTF-8 (otherwise Excel falls back to the system codepage and mangles non-ASCII characters). If you see garbled accented or CJK characters when opening in Excel, save as UTF-8 with BOM via your text editor first or use Data → From Text/CSV and explicitly pick 65001: Unicode (UTF-8).