A fast CSV viewer for files Excel struggles with
The CSV viewer opens comma-, semicolon-, tab- or pipe-separated files as a scrollable table in your browser. Drop in a database export, a bank statement, an online-shop or accounting report or a log file and you can sort any column, filter rows as you type, check the statistics of each column and copy or export exactly the rows you need — without installing anything.
It is built for big files. Only the rows on screen are drawn, so a file with hundreds of thousands of rows scrolls smoothly, and the whole file is searched on every keystroke. Leading zeros, long ID numbers and dates stay exactly as they are in the file, because the viewer never converts a cell the way a spreadsheet does.
Your data stays on your device: the file is read by JavaScript in this page and is never uploaded.
How to use the CSV Viewer
- Drop a
.csv,.tsvor.txtfile onto the box, click it to choose one, or open Or paste CSV text. - Check the badges: rows × columns, the detected delimiter and encoding, and any rows with the wrong number of fields. Change Delimiter or Encoding if the columns look wrong.
- Click a column heading to sort ascending, again for descending, and a third time to return to file order.
- Type in Filter rows. Choose a column under In column to search just that column, or to use
>,<,>=,<=and=on numbers and dates. - Click a cell and Shift+click another to select a block, then press Ctrl+C or Copy selection to paste it into a spreadsheet.
- Press Export filtered view to download the sorted, filtered rows as CSV or TSV.
CSV Viewer features
Handles 100,000+ rows
Virtual scrolling draws only the visible rows, and files up to 400 MB are read in chunks with a progress bar.
Smart sorting
Number columns sort numerically (9 before 10 before 100), date columns chronologically, and text case-insensitively in natural order (item2 before item10; plain A–Z above 200,000 rows). Empty cells always go last.
Encoding detection
UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM and UTF-16 files are recognised automatically; anything that is not valid UTF-8 is read as Windows-1252, and you can switch to Cyrillic, Central European, Japanese or Chinese encodings.
Column statistics
For every column: filled and empty cells, unique values, and minimum, maximum, mean and sum for numbers — recalculated for the rows that match your filter.
Spreadsheet-style selection
Select cells with the mouse or the arrow keys, see the count, sum and average of the numbers in the selection, and copy it as tab-separated text.
Frozen header and row numbers
The header row stays visible while you scroll, and each row shows its row number in the file, matching the row number Excel would show.
How the viewer recognises numbers and dates
Each column’s type is decided from up to 5,000 of its values; a column counts as numbers or dates when at least 95% of its non-empty cells fit one of these patterns. Placeholders such as N/A or - are ignored. The type is shown in the statistics table and in each heading’s tooltip.
| Cells look like | Read as | Notes |
|---|---|---|
1234.5, -12, 1e6, 45% | Number | Percent signs are ignored when sorting |
1,234,567.89, $1,250, £99.50 | Number | Thousands separators and leading currency symbols are allowed |
12,34,567.00, ₹1,24,500 | Number (Indian grouping) | Lakh/crore grouping; statistics use the same grouping |
1.234,56, 3,5 | Number (1.234,5) | Decimal comma, common in European semicolon CSVs |
2026-03-15, 2026-03-15T09:30:00 | Date | ISO 8601 |
15/03/2026, 03/15/2026, 15 Mar 2026 | Date (dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy) | The order is taken from values above 12; if none, US-English browsers assume month first, all others day first |
Tips for awkward CSV files
- Accented letters look wrong (é instead of é)? The file is probably Windows-1252 but was read as UTF-8, or the other way round. Pick the encoding manually.
- Everything is in one column? Choose the delimiter yourself. Excel in much of Europe saves CSV with semicolons.
- A “rows have a different number of fields” warning usually means an unquoted comma inside a value or a broken quote. The CSV Formatter lists every such row and can repair the file.
- Need the data in another format? Convert it with CSV to JSON or CSV to Excel.
CSV Viewer FAQ
How do I open a CSV file online without Excel?
Drop the file onto this CSV viewer. It appears as a table straight away, with the delimiter and encoding detected for you. Nothing is installed and the file is not uploaded.
How large a CSV file can it open?
Files up to 400 MB. A file of 100,000 rows typically opens in well under a second on a laptop; multi-million-row files work too but take longer and need enough free memory. Phones manage smaller files.
Why does Excel show my data differently?
Excel converts values when it opens a CSV: it drops leading zeros, turns long numbers into scientific notation and reformats dates. This viewer shows each cell exactly as written in the file.
Can I edit the CSV here?
No — this is a viewer. You can sort, filter, copy and export the rows you need. To clean or repair a file (trim spaces, change the delimiter, remove duplicates), use the CSV Formatter.
Is my CSV file uploaded to a server?
No. The file is read and displayed by JavaScript in your browser, so confidential exports such as payroll or customer lists stay on your computer.
What does the Row column mean?
It is the row’s position in the original file with the header counted as row 1 — the same number you would see in Excel — so you can find a row again after sorting or filtering. Blank lines are skipped but still counted.