Cleanroom your file stays on this computer

Home › CSV tools › Change CSV delimiter

Runs in your browser

Change a CSV delimiter

If a CSV opens in Excel with everything crammed into column A, the delimiter is usually the reason — much of Europe uses semicolons because the comma is the decimal separator. This detects what your file actually uses and rewrites it with the delimiter you need.

Your file stays on this computer. There’s no upload button here, because there’s nowhere to send it. This tool runs inside the page you opened — like a calculator on a web page, it keeps working once it has loaded. How this works, and how to check it →

How to use it

  1. Choose your file. The current delimiter is detected automatically.
  2. Pick the delimiter you want in the new file.
  3. Click Convert and download the corrected file.

Questions

Is my file uploaded anywhere?

No. The whole tool is inside this page, so the work happens on your computer. There is no server to send it to. If you'd rather check than take our word for it: use the tool once, on a sample file, with the settings you want. Then turn off your wi-fi and do exactly the same thing again in that tab, without reloading. It still works, because everything it needs is already here.

Why does my CSV open as one column in Excel?

Excel uses your system's list separator, which follows your regional settings. On many European systems that's a semicolon, so a comma-separated file isn't recognised as delimited at all and lands in a single column. Converting to semicolons fixes it without changing your Excel settings.

What happens to values that contain the new delimiter?

They're quoted automatically, following the standard CSV escaping rules, so the output stays valid no matter which delimiter you pick.

How do I change the delimiter in Excel itself?

You can't set it inside Excel — it reads the list separator from your operating system's regional settings. On Windows that's Control Panel → Region → Additional settings → List separator. On a Mac it's System Settings → General → Language & Region → Number separators, and the change affects every application on the machine. Most people don't want that. Converting the one file to the delimiter Excel already expects, which is what this page does, leaves your system alone.

Which delimiter does my Excel expect?

Whichever your region uses as a list separator. Countries that write decimals with a comma — Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and most of Europe — expect semicolons. Countries that write decimals with a point — the UK, US, Australia, Ireland — expect commas. If Excel shows everything in column A, you've got the other one.