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TSV to CSV

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Spreadsheets and clipboards often hand you tab-separated data (TSV), but most importers, databases and scripts expect comma-separated CSV. Swapping tabs for commas by hand is risky: a single value that already contains a comma or a quote shifts every column after it. Paste your TSV here and the converter rewrites it as CSV, wrapping only the fields that need it in double quotes following RFC 4180, so the columns still line up when you import the result.

How the conversion works

  1. 1

    Paste your TSV

    Copy rows straight from Excel, Google Sheets or any tab-separated file and paste them into the box.

  2. 2

    Rows and columns are read

    Each line becomes a row and every tab marks a column boundary; fields already wrapped in double quotes are understood too.

  3. 3

    CSV-breaking fields are quoted

    Any value containing a comma, a double quote or a line break is wrapped in double quotes, and embedded quotes are doubled.

  4. 4

    Copy the CSV

    The comma-separated result appears in the output box, ready to copy into your target tool.

How fields are quoted (RFC 4180)

A field is wrapped in double quotes only when it contains a comma, a double quote or a line break. Any double quotes inside it are then doubled. Plain fields are left as they are, so the output stays easy to read.

Field content Written to CSV as
Ada Ada
Vienna, Austria “Vienna, Austria”
24“ monitor “24”“ monitor“
red red

This is the same rule Excel, Google Sheets, pandas and standard CSV libraries follow, so the file re-imports without shifted columns.

TSV vs CSV

Aspect TSV CSV
Delimiter Tab Comma
Commas inside a field Safe, no quoting Need quoting
Tool support Narrower Almost universal
Editing by hand Simple Quotes can confuse

TSV is handy when your data is full of commas; CSV is what most importers, databases and scripts expect. Convert whichever way the destination needs.

What this converter does

  • Reads tab-separated rows and rewrites them with commas.
  • Applies RFC 4180 quoting so commas and quotes inside a field never break the columns.
  • Keeps empty cells, and keeps rows of different lengths exactly as you pasted them.
  • Understands fields that are already double-quoted in your TSV.

It does one job and does it cleanly: tab to comma. It does not add a UTF-8 BOM and does not switch to a semicolon delimiter; your rows come back in the same order, just comma-separated.

Comma or semicolon?

The output is standard comma CSV. On some European systems (for example German or French editions of Excel) a CSV file is expected to use semicolons, because the comma is used as the decimal separator there. If your spreadsheet drops everything into a single column, import through Data > From Text/CSV and choose comma as the delimiter, or re-export from your spreadsheet using semicolons.

Frequently Asked Questions

RFC 4180 only requires quotes when a field contains a comma, a double quote or a line break. Everything else is left unquoted so the file stays readable, and Excel, Google Sheets and pandas treat both forms identically.

Yes. Each line is read on its own, so a short or long row keeps exactly the cells you pasted. Nothing is padded out or trimmed to match the other rows.

No. This is a quick copy-paste tool: paste the tab-separated text into the box and copy the CSV from the result box into your spreadsheet, database or script.

The conversion runs on our server through a standard secure request. Your text is used only to build the CSV and is not stored or logged.

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