List to CSV
Turn a pasted list into correctly quoted CSV a spreadsheet can read.
One value per row, ending in CRLF the way a spreadsheet expects a CSV file to. A value is wrapped in quotes only when it needs to be — when it contains a comma, a quote, a line break, or edge spaces — and any quote inside it is doubled, as RFC 4180 requires. Up to 200,000 characters.
Result
Start typing and the result appears here. No button needed.
List to CSV, without the extra steps.
Turn a list of values into CSV that survives a spreadsheet import. Each line becomes a value, quoted only where the format requires it — a comma, a quote, a line break, or edge spaces inside a value — with internal quotes doubled the way RFC 4180 specifies. Choose one value per row for a file, or every value on one row for a single record.
How to use this tool
- 1Paste your list with one value per line.
- 2Choose the layout and the field separator your spreadsheet expects. The result updates automatically.
- 3Check how many values were quoted, then select Copy result.
When List to CSV is the right tool
- A list of customer names has to go into a spreadsheet import, and several of them are written Surname, Firstname.
- A colleague needs one CSV row of tag values to paste into a config field or a formula, not a file.
- A European Excel install expects semicolons, and the values themselves contain commas.
- A list came out of an export with stray quotes and blank lines that would each become their own broken record.
Quoting is a rule, not a style
CSV has exactly four situations that force quotes: the value contains the field separator, a double quote, a line break, or a leading or trailing space that would otherwise be trimmed. Quoting everything is legal but makes the file harder to read and diff; quoting nothing corrupts any value containing a comma. This follows the rule, quotes only what needs it, doubles internal quotes as RFC 4180 requires, and tells you how many values needed it — which is usually the fastest way to spot that a value contains something you did not expect.
The separator changes what needs escaping
In a semicolon-separated file, a comma is ordinary text and needs no quotes; in a comma-separated one, the same value must be wrapped. That is why the separator is a choice rather than a detail: picking the one your spreadsheet actually expects produces a cleaner file as well as a correct one. Tab-separated output follows the same logic and is what many database and analytics tools prefer, since tabs appear inside values far less often than commas do.
A leading = is a formula, not a value
Spreadsheets evaluate a cell beginning with =, +, - or @ when the file is opened, and quoting does not prevent it — the quotes are stripped during parsing. That is how a pasted list can run something on someone else's machine, and it is also how a phone number written -44 quietly becomes a negative number. Those values are counted and named here rather than silently altered, because the right fix depends on the destination: import the column as text, or prefix the value with an apostrophe.
A few quick answers.
When it contains the field separator, a double quote, a line break, or a leading or trailing space — the four cases where an unquoted value would be misread. Any quote inside a quoted value is doubled, which is how CSV escapes it. Everything else is written as-is, so the output stays readable rather than being quoted from end to end.
Excel in much of Europe reads and writes semicolon-separated files, because the comma is the decimal separator there. Choosing Semicolon also changes what needs quoting: a value containing a comma is ordinary text in a semicolon file and is left unquoted, which is exactly what those spreadsheets expect.
Not necessarily. A spreadsheet reads a leading =, +, - or @ as a formula rather than text, no matter how the field is quoted, so a pasted value can execute on open. The workspace counts those values and warns you, because the fix — importing as text, or prefixing with an apostrophe — depends on where the file is going.
No. This turns one list into one column, or one row, and quotes it correctly. Building a table means deciding which values belong in which column, which is a different job — paste each column separately, or assemble the rows in a spreadsheet where you can see the grid.
The CSV specification ends each record with a carriage return and a line feed, and Excel is the tool most likely to be reading what you produce here. The line breaks are invisible when you paste the result, but they are what stops the last value of one record merging into the first value of the next on some importers.
The text itself is unchanged, so accents and other scripts pass through exactly as pasted. What breaks them is a spreadsheet guessing the file's encoding after you save it — Excel in particular needs a UTF-8 byte-order mark or an explicit import step. Save as UTF-8 and choose that encoding when importing.