Delimiter Conversions
16 ready-made converters, one per delimiter pair. Each page loads the tool already configured, so you paste and press convert. All free, all in your browser.
Which delimiter should you use?
The right separator depends on what your data contains, not on habit. Pick the one your values will never contain.
| Delimiter | Best for | Breaks when |
|---|---|---|
Comma , | Simple lists, IDs, numbers | A value contains a comma — names, addresses, descriptions |
Tab ⇥ | Spreadsheet copy-paste, free text | Rarely. Tabs almost never appear inside data |
Semicolon ; | European-locale CSV | Sent to a system expecting commas |
Pipe | | Legacy feeds, logs, regex alternation | Used as regex without escaping metacharacters |
Newline ⏎ | Working format for every other tool here | A value itself spans multiple lines |
Three things that catch people out
- A column is not a row. Copy a column from Excel and you get newlines. Copy a row and you get tabs. Different split mode each time.
- Quoting hides commas.
"Chair, oak",12is two fields, not three. Check for quotes before you split on commas. - Trailing spaces survive.
a, bgives youbwith a space in front unless trim is on. It is on by default here.
Not sure which format to pick?
Converting is the easy part; choosing is the decision. Three side-by-side comparisons cover the ones people actually argue about: CSV vs TSV, comma vs semicolon, and the full comparison index.
The two directions
Splitting: one thing into many
Going from a delimited string to one item per line. Do this first — sorting, deduplicating and counting all work line by line, so a comma-separated string is a single item to every one of them. Start with comma to newline.
Joining: many things into one
Going from a column to a single line. This is the last step, after the list is clean. The most common target is a SQL IN clause or a plain comma-separated list.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a delimiter?
A delimiter is the character that marks the boundary between values in text data: the comma in CSV, the tab in TSV, the pipe in a log file, or the line break in a plain list.
Which delimiter is safest for messy data?
The tab. Real-world text contains commas and semicolons constantly, but almost never contains a tab character, so tab-separated files need no quoting to stay valid.
Do these converters change my data?
Only the separators between values. The values themselves are untouched unless you turn on an option such as trim, deduplicate or sort.
Can I convert more than two formats at once?
Yes. Split by one delimiter and join with another in a single pass, and apply trimming, deduplication and sorting at the same time.