Convert Pipes to Commas
Pipe-delimited in, CSV out. Most modern tools expect commas, and most legacy exports do not provide them.
Examples
| Input | Output | |
|---|---|---|
| Simple | apple|banana|cherry |
apple, banana, cherry |
| Realistic | 2026-01-04|WARN|disk 91% |
2026-01-04, WARN, disk 91% |
Why convert this way
Pipe-delimited files are common but poorly supported. Excel will not auto-split them on open, and plenty of importers only accept CSV. Converting is usually the shortest route to a file that just works.
When you will need it
- Opening a legacy system export in a spreadsheet
- Importing a pipe-delimited feed into a tool that wants CSV
- Cleaning log lines before analysis
- Normalising files from several sources into one format
a | b. Leave Trim whitespace on or your CSV values arrive padded, which quietly breaks exact-match lookups later.
What the settings do here
- Split on pipe — the tool reads
apple|banana|cherryas 3 separate items. - Join with ,
— producing
apple, banana, cherry.
Where this comes up
Usually a rescue job. A monitoring tool or legacy export produces pipe-delimited output, and the analyst who needs it only has Excel, which will not split on pipes when opening a file.
Related conversions
Going the other way, or joining with something else entirely? The delimiter converter accepts any split and join pair including custom separators, and the index has the 16 ready-made ones.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I open a pipe-delimited file in Excel?
Convert the pipes to commas first. Excel does not auto-split on pipes when opening a file, so converting is usually quicker than walking through the import wizard.
Why do my converted values have extra spaces?
Pipe-delimited files often use a | b with padding. Enable trimming during the conversion or those spaces become part of each value and break exact-match lookups.