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CSV to TSV Converter

Paste comma- or semicolon-separated data and get clean tab-separated text, ready for spreadsheets, databases and command-line tools.

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What is CSV to TSV Converter?

TSV (tab-separated values) uses a tab character between fields instead of a comma. It is what you get when you copy cells from Excel or Google Sheets, and many bioinformatics, database and Unix tools prefer it because commas inside text do not need quoting.

The real difficulty is the data that breaks the format: a TSV row cannot contain a raw tab or line break. This converter parses your CSV properly (quotes, escaped quotes, embedded line breaks, delimiter auto-detection) and lets you decide what happens to those cells: escape them as \t and \n, replace them with a space, remove them, or keep them and wrap the cell in double quotes the way Excel does.

How does it work?

  1. Paste your CSV or open a .csv file; leave the input delimiter on auto-detect or pick it yourself.
  2. Choose what to do with tabs and line breaks found inside cells: escape, replace with a space, remove, or quote.
  3. Optionally trim the spaces around cells and pick LF or CRLF line endings.
  4. Copy the TSV or download it as data.tsv; the note under the result tells you how many cells were rewritten.

Common use cases

  • Pasting a CSV export into a spreadsheet so that each value lands in its own column.
  • Feeding data to awk, cut, sort or a database bulk loader that expects tab-separated input.
  • Removing the quoting overhead from a CSV whose text fields are full of commas.
  • Preparing a reference table for a bioinformatics or data-science pipeline that reads .tsv files.

Examples

Try this input in the tool above:

Input
id,name,note
1,Alice,"likes, commas"
2,Bob,"two	columns in one"
3,Chloé,"line one
line two"
Output
id	name	note
1	Alice	likes, commas
2	Bob	two\tcolumns in one
3	Chloé	line one\nline two

Privacy

CSV to TSV Converter runs entirely in your browser. The text or files you provide are processed on your device and are not uploaded, logged or stored on our servers.

Limitations

Plain TSV has no standard quoting mechanism, so escaped sequences such as \t are only reversible if the reader knows about them; use the quote option when the receiving tool understands Excel-style quotes.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to a cell that contains a tab?

A raw tab would shift every following value into the wrong column, so by default it is written as the two characters \t. You can instead replace it with a space, delete it, or keep it inside a double-quoted cell.

Are the quotes from my CSV kept?

The CSV quoting is consumed while parsing, so "likes, commas" becomes likes, commas. Quotes appear in the TSV only when you choose the quote option and a cell actually needs protecting.

How is this different from the CSV Delimiter Converter?

That tool swaps the delimiter between any two characters and re-quotes the fields. This one is specialised for the TSV target: it makes the result safe for tab-based formats and reports every cell that had to be altered.

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