TXT to CSV Converter – Convert Text File to CSV Online (Delimiter & Fixed-Width)

TXT to CSV Converter

This tool converts text with various delimiters to standard CSV files, supporting both auto-detection and manual delimiter settings. It also handles non-UTF-8 encodings, Excel-compatible BOM output, and a header toggle — the three things that most often trip up a plain "save as CSV".

Tab-Delimited (TSV)

Auto-detects tab-separated data, ideal for TSV files or data copied from spreadsheet software.

Comma-Delimited (CSV)

Auto-detects comma-separated data, the most common CSV format.

Fixed-Width Text

Select Manual delimiter → Space to handle fixed-width columns. The tool splits on 2+ spaces.

What Is a TXT File?

A TXT file (plain text file, usually .txt) is the simplest possible container for text: a sequence of characters with line breaks, and nothing else — no built-in notion of rows, columns, or data types. The "structure" of a TXT file is purely a convention chosen by whoever created it: it might be comma-separated, tab-separated, pipe-separated, fixed-width (columns padded with spaces), or free-form prose.

Because TXT has no self-describing format, two problems follow:

1. The reader has to guess the delimiter. That is what the Auto-detect mode does.
2. The encoding is ambiguous. A TXT file carries no label saying "I am GBK" or "I am Shift-JIS", so a reader that assumes UTF-8 will show mojibake for anything else. That is what the Encoding dropdown solves.

What Is a CSV File?

A CSV file (Comma-Separated Values, .csv) is a standardized text format for tabular data. Each line is a row, and within a row the columns are separated by a delimiter (by default a comma). The one rule that makes CSV more than "just text" is quoting: a field that contains the delimiter, a newline, or a quote is wrapped in double quotes, and internal quotes are doubled. That rule is what lets a cell contain "Smith, John" without breaking the row into two columns.

This tool uses PapaParse for both parsing and writing, so quoting and escaping are handled correctly — you do not have to worry about a comma inside a cell corrupting your output.

TXT vs CSV: What Is the Difference?

In short: TXT is "just characters"; CSV is "characters plus a quoting rule". Converting TXT to CSV means (a) deciding the delimiter, (b) parsing the rows, and (c) re-writing every field with correct quoting so that a value containing the delimiter no longer breaks the table.

When to Convert TXT to CSV

• You exported data from an old system as tab- or pipe-delimited text and need a .csv for a spreadsheet or BI tool.
• You copied a table from a web page or terminal and it landed as tab-separated text in your clipboard.
• You have a fixed-width report (bank statement, mainframe dump, log) and want real columns.
• You received a GBK / Shift-JIS text file that opens as garbled characters and want a clean UTF-8 CSV.
• You need to feed a machine-learning or ETL pipeline that only accepts CSV input.

Encoding, Mojibake, and the BOM

The single most common reason a TXT-to-CSV conversion "looks wrong" is an encoding mismatch. Here is the 30-second version:

• UTF-8 is the modern default and what the web expects. Most files from Linux/macOS and the web are UTF-8.
• GBK / GB2312 / GB18030 is the legacy Chinese encoding. Many older .txt files from Windows in mainland China are GBK, not UTF-8.
• Shift-JIS is the legacy Japanese encoding; Big5 is the legacy Traditional-Chinese encoding.
• Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) covers Western-European languages and is a safe fallback that never errors (it maps every byte to some character, even if wrong).

If your preview shows ���� or é?? where Chinese or Japanese should be, the file is not UTF-8. Pick the right encoding from the Encoding dropdown and the preview re-decodes instantly.

The Excel BOM problem. Even a perfectly valid UTF-8 CSV can open as garbled text in Excel on Windows, because Excel does not reliably auto-detect UTF-8 without a hint. The hint is a BOM (Byte Order Mark, U+FEFF) as the very first character. This tool's Excel-compatible (BOM) checkbox is on by default, so the downloaded CSV opens cleanly in Excel. Turn it off only if a downstream script chokes on the BOM.

Features

• Auto-detect delimiter - Intelligently detects comma, tab, pipe, semicolon, and other common delimiters
• Manual delimiter setting - Supports comma, tab, pipe, semicolon, space, or a custom delimiter for special format requirements
• Fixed-width support - Splits on 2+ spaces to approximate fixed-width columns
• Encoding selector - Decode GBK, GB18030, Shift-JIS, Big5, Latin1, KOI8-R, or UTF-8 — fixes garbled-text (mojibake) files
• Excel-compatible BOM - Prepends a UTF-8 BOM so Excel opens Chinese/Japanese CSV without garbling (toggleable)
• First row as header - Decide whether the first row is column names or data; off by default for headerless files
• Instant preview - What you see is what you get, with search, sort, and pagination
• Download or copy - Save as a .csv file named after your source, or copy the CSV text straight to the clipboard
• Local processing - Data never leaves your browser, protecting your privacy

Examples

Tab-delimited

Name	Age	City
Alice	30	New York
Bob	25	London

Comma-delimited

Name,Age,City
Alice,30,New York
Bob,25,London

Pipe-delimited

Name|Age|City
Alice|30|New York
Bob|25|London

Semicolon-delimited

Name;Age;City
Alice;30;New York
Bob;25;London

Space-delimited (2+ spaces)

Name  Age  City
Alice  30  New York
Bob    25  London

Related Tools

• CSV Viewer - View CSV files online
• CSV to Excel - Convert CSV to Excel
• Excel to CSV - Convert Excel to CSV