CSV Delimiter Detector: Guide
- Intent
- CSV delimiter detector online: figure out the separator (comma, semicolon, tab, or pipe) when a CSV will not import correctly.
- What it does
- Counts candidate delimiter characters in the first line and reports the most likely separator.
- Key features
- Supports , ; TAB |, Shows match count, Fast first-line heuristic
- Privacy
- Everything runs locally in your browser. No uploads.
- Best for
- When Excel/Sheets imports everything into one column (wrong separator)
- Debugging vendor exports that use semicolons, tabs, or pipes instead of commas
- Anyone searching 'CSV delimiter detector' or 'CSV separator'
- Why this tool
- Find the separator quickly without trial-and-error imports
- Works from pasted CSV text (you can test a few lines)
- Local-only: no uploads
How to use
- 1Paste a representative header line (or the first few lines) of your CSV.
- 2Click Detect delimiter.
- 3Use the reported delimiter when importing into Excel, Sheets, or databases.
Common mistakes
- Quoted fields can contain delimiter characters, which can mislead simple counting.
- If the first line is weird (or empty), the guess can be wrong.
- Mixed-delimiter files will not be reliably detected by a heuristic.
Examples
Comma-separated (standard)
Input first line:
name,email,age
Detected: ','
Tab-separated (TSV)
Input first line:
name email age
Detected: TAB (\t)