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CSV is a simple file format used to store tabular data, such as a spreadsheet or database. Files in the CSV format can be imported to and exported from programs that store data in tables, such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc.
CSV stands for 'comma-separated values'. Its data fields are most often separated, or delimited, by a comma. For example, let's say you had a spreadsheet containing the following data.
Name | Class | Dorm | Room | GPA |
---|---|---|---|---|
Sally Whittaker | 2018 | McCarren House | 312 | 3.75 |
Belinda Jameson | 2017 | Cushing House | 148 | 3.52 |
Jeff Smith | 2018 | Prescott House | 17-D | 3.20 |
Sandy Allen | 2019 | Oliver House | 108 | 3.48 |
The above data could be represented in a CSV-formatted file as follows:
Here, the fields of data in each row are delimited with a comma and individual rows are separated by a newline.
A CSV is a text file, so it can be created and edited using any text editor. More frequently, however, a CSV file is created by exporting (File menu -> Export) a spreadsheet or database in the program that created it. Click on a link below for the steps to create a CSV file in Notepad, Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice Calc, and Google Docs.
Notepad (or any text editor)
To create a CSV file with a text editor, first choose your favorite text editor, such as Notepad or vim, and open a new file. Then enter the text data you want the file to contain, separating each value with a comma and each row with a new line.
Save this file with the extension.csv. You can then open the file using Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet program. It would create a table of data similar to the following:
Title1 | Title2 | Title3 |
one | two | three |
example1 | example2 | example3 |
In the CSV file you created, individual fields of data were separated by commas. But what if the data itself has commas in it?
If the fields of data in your CSV file contain commas, you can protect them by enclosing those data fields in double quotes ('). The commas that are part of your data will then be kept separate from the commas which delimit the fields themselves.
For example, let's say that one of our text fields is a user-created description of some kind and users are allowed to put commas in the description. If our data looked like this:
Lead | Title | Phone | Notes |
Jim Grayson | Senior Manager | (555)761-2385 | Spoke Tuesday, he's interested |
Prescilla Winston | Development Director | (555)218-3981 | said to call again next week |
Melissa Potter | Head of Accounts | (555)791-3471 | Not interested, gave referral |
To retain the commas in our 'Notes' column, we can enclose those fields in quotation marks. For instance:
As you can see, only the fields that contain commas are enclosed in quotes.
The same goes for newlines which may be part of your field data. Any fields containing a newline as part of its data need to be enclosed in double quotes.
If your fields contain double quotes as part of their data, the internal quotation marks need to be doubled so they can be interpreted correctly. For instance, given the following data:
Player | Position | Nicknames | Years Active |
---|---|---|---|
Skippy Peterson | First Base | 'Blue Dog', 'The Magician' | 1908-1913 |
Bud Grimsby | Center Field | 'The Reaper', 'Longneck' | 1910-1917 |
Vic Crumb | Shortstop | 'Fat Vic', 'Icy Hot' | 1911-1912 |
We can represent it in a CSV file as follows:
Here, the entire data field is enclosed in quotes, and internal quotation marks are preceded (escaped by) an additional double quote.
Here are the rules of how data should be formatted in a CSV file, from the IETF's document, RFC 4180. In these examples, 'CRLF' is used to represent a carriage return and a linefeed (which together constitute a newline).
- Each record (row of data) is to be located on a separate line, delimited by a line break. For example:
- The last record in the file may or may not have an ending line break. For example:
- There may be an optional header line appearing as the first line of the file with the same format as normal record lines. The header will contain names corresponding to the fields in the file and should contain the same number of fields as the records in the rest of the file. For example:
- In the header and each record, there may be one or more fields, separated by commas. Each line should contain the same number of fields throughout the file. Spaces are considered part of a field and should not be ignored. The last field in the record must not be followed by a comma. For example:
- Each field may or may not be enclosed in double quotes. If fields are not enclosed with double quotes, then double quotes may not appear inside the fields. For example:
- Fields containing line breaks (CRLF), double quotes, and commas should be enclosed in double quotes. For example:
- If double quotes are used to enclose fields, then a double quote appearing inside a field must be escaped by preceding it with another double quote. For example:
Microsoft Excel
To create a CSV file using Microsoft Excel, launch Excel and then open the file you want to save in CSV format. For example, below is the data contained in our example Excel worksheet:
Item | Cost | Sold | Profit |
---|---|---|---|
Keyboard | $10.00 | $16.00 | $6.00 |
Monitor | $80.00 | $120.00 | $40.00 |
Mouse | $5.00 | $7.00 | $2.00 |
Total | $48.00 |
Once open, click File and choose Save As. Under Save as type, select CSV (Comma delimited) or CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv), depending on your version of Microsoft Excel.
After you save the file, you are free to open it up in a text editor to view it or edit it manually. Its contents will resemble the following:
NoteThe last row begins with two commas because the first two fields of that row were empty in our spreadsheet. Don't delete them — the two commas are required so that the fields correspond from row to row. They cannot be omitted.
OpenOffice Calc
To create a CSV file using OpenOffice Calc, launch Calc and open the file you want to save as a CSV file. For example, below is the data contained in our example Calc worksheet.
Item | Cost | Sold | Profit |
---|---|---|---|
Keyboard | $10.00 | $16.00 | $6.00 |
Monitor | $80.00 | $120.00 | $40.00 |
Mouse | $5.00 | $7.00 | $2.00 |
Total | $48.00 |
Once open, click File, choose the Save As option, and for the Save as type option, select Text CSV (.csv) (*.csv).
After you save the file, if you were to open the CSV file in a text editor, such as Notepad, the CSV file should resemble the example below.
As in our Excel example, the two commas at the beginning of the last line are necessary to make sure the fields correspond from row to row. Do not remove them!
Google Docs
Open Google Docs and open the spreadsheet file you want to save as a CSV file. Click File, Download as, and then select CSV (current sheet).
Additional information
- See our CSV definition for further information and related links.
A CSV file is a Comma Separated Values file. All CSV files are plain text files, can contain numbers and letters only, and structure the data contained within them in a tabular, or table, form.
Files ending in the CSV file extension are generally used to exchange data, usually when there's a large amount, between different applications. Database programs, analytical software, and other applications that store massive amounts of information (like contacts and customer data), usually support the CSV format.
A Comma Separated Values file might sometimes be referred to as a Character Separated Values or Comma Delimited file, but regardless of how someone says it, they're talking about the same CSV format.
CSV is also an acronym for comma separated variable, circuit switched voice, and colon separated value.
How to Open a CSV File
Spreadsheet software is generally used to open and edit CSV files, such as the free OpenOffice Calc or Kingsoft Spreadsheets. Spreadsheet tools are great for CSV files because the data contained in the file is usually going to be filtered or manipulated in some way.
To view and/or edit your CSV file online, you can use Google Sheets. To do that, upload your file to Google Drive via New > File upload, right-click the file in Google Drive when it's done uploading, and choose Open with > Google Sheets.
You can also use a text editor to open CSV files, but large ones will be very difficult to work with in these types of programs. If you want to do this, see our favorites in this Best Free Text Editors list.
Microsoft Excel supports CSV files, too, but the program isn't free to use. Even so, it's probably the most commonly used program for CSV files.
Considering the number of programs out there that support structured, text-based data like CSV, you may have more than one program installed that can open these types of files. If so, and the one that opens by default when you double-tap or double-click on CSV files in Windows isn't the one you like to use with them, please know that changing that program is very easy.
See How to Change File Associations in Windows for a tutorial. Any program that supports CSV files is fair game for this 'default' program choice.
How to Convert a CSV File
Since CSV files store information in a text-only form, support for saving the file to another format is included in lots of different online services and downloadable programs.
All of the desktop programs mentioned above can convert a CSV file to Microsoft Excel formats like XLSX and XLS, as well as to TXT, XML, SQL, HTML, ODS, and other formats. This conversion process is usually done through the File > Save as menu.
You can also use Google Sheets to save the CSV file to another format. From the File > Download as menu, pick XLSX, ODS, PDF, or any other supported format.
There are also some free file converters that run in your web browser, like Zamzar for instance, that can convert CSV files to some of the formats listed above but also to PDF and RTF.
The CSVJSON tool (guess...) converts CSV data to JSON, super helpful if you're importing massive amounts of information from a traditional application into a web-based project.
You cannot usually change a file extension (like the CSV file extension) to one that your computer recognizes and expect the newly renamed file to be usable. An actual file format conversion using one of the methods described above must take place in most cases. However, since CSV files can only contain text, you can rename any CSV file to any other text format and it should open, albeit in a less helpful way than if you had just left it at CSV.
Important Information on Editing CSV Files
You'll probably only encounter a CSV file when exporting information from one program to a file, and then use that same file to import the data into a different program, especially when dealing with table-oriented applications.
However, you may at times find yourself editing a CSV file, or making one from scratch, in which case the following should be kept in mind:
A common program used to open and edit CSV files is Microsoft Excel. Something important to understand about using Excel, or any other similar spreadsheet software, is that even though those programs appear to provide support for multiple sheets when you're editing a CSV file, the CSV format does not support 'sheets' or 'tabs,' so data you create in these additional areas won't be written back to the CSV when you save.
For example, let's say you modify data in the first sheet of a document and then save the file to CSV — that data in the first sheet is what will be saved. However, if you switch over to a different sheet and add data there, and then save the file again, it's the information in that recently-edited sheet that will be saved — the data in the first sheet will no longer be accessible after you've shut down the spreadsheet program.
It's really the nature of the spreadsheet software that makes this mishap confusing. Most spreadsheet tools support things like charts, formulas, row styling, images, and other things that simply can't be saved under the CSV format.
There's no problem so long as you understand this limitation. This is why other, more advanced table formats exist, like XLSX. In other words, if you want to save any work beyond very basic data changes to a CSV, don't use CSV anymore — save or export to a more advanced format instead.
How CSV Files Are Structured
It's easy to make your own CSV file. Just get your data sorted how you want in one of the tools mentioned above, and then save what you have to the CSV format.
However, you can also create one manually, yes — from scratch, using any text editor.
Here's one example:
All CSV files follow the same overall format: each column is separated by a delimiter (like a comma), and each new line indicates a new row. Some programs that export data to a CSV file may use a different character to separate the values, like a tab, semicolon, or space.
What you see in the example above is how the data would appear if the CSV file were opened in a text editor. However, since spreadsheet software programs like Excel and OpenOffice Calc can open CSV files, and those programs contain cells to display information, the Name value would be positioned in the first cell with the John Doe in a new row just below it, and the others following the same pattern.
If you're embedding commas or using quotation marks in your CSV file, read edoceo's and CSVReader.com's articles for how you should go about that.
Still Having Problems Opening or Using a CSV File?
CSV files are deceptively simple. As straightforward as they are at first look, the slightest misplacement of a comma, or a basic confusion like the one we discussed above, can make them feel like rocket science.
Csv File Format Excel
Keep in mind that you might not be able to open the CSV file or read the text within it, for the simple reason that you're confusing another file for one in the CSV format. Some files share some of the same file extension letters as CSV files but aren't actually in the same format, or even a remotely similar one.
CVS, CVX, CV, and CVC are just a few examples where the files probably can't open in a spreadsheet program even though the suffix looks a lot like CSV. If this is the case with your file, research the real file extension on Google or here on Lifewire, to see its compatible openers or converters.