Convert CSV to TSV

Why switch from commas to tabs

Commas appear everywhere in real data: addresses, descriptions, numbers written with thousands separators. CSV handles that with quotes, but many tools handle quotes badly. Tabs almost never appear inside values, which makes TSV simpler to split, paste and process.

This converter reads the CSV with a full parser, so quoted commas and line breaks are understood, and writes each row back out with tabs. It works on the raw rows, which means duplicate column names, empty headers and the exact column order are preserved.

CSV vs TSV at a glance

How to convert CSV to TSV

1. 1

   Step 1: Drop the CSV

   Select a comma, semicolon or pipe separated file; the delimiter is detected.

2. 2

   Step 2: TSV is preselected

   Leave the target as TSV.

3. 3

   Step 3: Convert

   Each row is parsed and rewritten with tab separators.

4. 4

   Step 4: Download the .tsv

   Paste it into a spreadsheet or load it into your pipeline.

What is preserved

Where TSV works better

• Pasting into spreadsheets. Tab-separated text pastes straight into separate cells.

• Command-line tools. cut, awk and sort split on tabs easily.

• Bioinformatics and research. Many scientific tools expect TSV input.

• Data with commas. Addresses and descriptions stay readable without quotes.

Values that contain tabs or line breaks

The strict TSV definition does not allow tabs or line breaks inside values. When your data contains them, the converter wraps those values in double quotes, which spreadsheets and most data libraries understand.

If your tool requires pure TSV with no quoting, replace tabs and line breaks inside values with spaces before converting.

Why row-by-row conversion matters

Some converters parse the header into keys and rebuild the file from objects, which silently renames duplicate columns and can drop columns with empty names. Working on raw rows avoids that, so the TSV is a faithful copy of the CSV with a different separator.

Line endings are written as CRLF, which works in Windows, macOS and Linux tools alike.

• Duplicate headers: kept as they are.
• Empty header cells: kept.
• Row count: identical, minus blank lines.

Tips for CSV to TSV

• Save the CSV as UTF-8 to keep special characters intact.
• Use a .tsv or .txt extension, depending on what your target tool expects.
• Check for tabs inside values if your tool rejects quoted fields.
• Convert back with TSV to CSV when needed.

CSV to TSV questions