CSV Cleaner
Fix a CSV that won’t import — garbled characters, broken rows, and all.
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Paste rows, or drop a .csv file
Garbled characters like “é” usually mean the file came from Excel in an older format. We detect it, show which one we used above, and always save your file in the standard format (UTF-8).
Your files stay on your device
How to use it
Drop a broken CSV here to fix garbled characters, rows with the wrong number of columns, and hidden spaces. Every change is listed. Your file stays on your device.
A CSV that won’t import usually has one of four problems: weird characters like “é” instead of “é”, the wrong separator, rows with too many or too few columns, or hidden spaces that stop values matching. This fixes all four.
Drop your file onto the box above or paste the rows. You get a cleaned-up file to download, plus a list of every change and which rows were affected — nothing is changed behind your back.
You choose what happens to rows with the wrong number of columns. The default keeps any extra values in new columns so nothing is lost. You can also cut them off, drop the row, or leave it.
Need a semicolon file as commas? Set what to read and what to write separately.
FAQ
Why does my CSV show é instead of é?
It was saved in one character format and opened in another. Drop it here and it’s fixed and saved in the standard format (UTF-8).
What happens to rows with too many values?
By default, the extras go into new columns so nothing is lost. You can also cut them, drop the row, or leave it.
How is this different from the CSV Formatter?
The formatter tells you what’s wrong. This tool fixes it.
Can it change semicolons to commas?
Yes. Pick what to read it as and what to save it as.
Can anyone else see my file?
No. It’s fixed on your device and never sent anywhere.
How it worksFor the curious
Encoding is detected by decoding strictly as UTF-8 first; that test fails on almost any non-UTF-8 byte sequence, so success is strong evidence. When it fails, the file is nearly always Windows-1252 from Excel — the cause of é becoming é. The encoding used is named above the output, and output is always UTF-8 with Unix line endings.
Invisible fixes: non-breaking spaces from copied web tables, zero-width spaces and joiners, and word joiners are removed, and line breaks inside fields are collapsed to a space. These are why “Total ” and “Total” refuse to match in a lookup.
Every repair is counted and the affected row numbers named. The CSV Formatter only validates and reports; this tool rewrites the file, which is why they are separate.