I am looking for a free editor to edit comma-delimited text files, or .csv format.
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9What do you need a special, CSV-specific editor to do that something like TextWrangler (or anything with column-based selections) can't do for you? Might help guide the answers if you could detail why something like Google Docs or CodeWrangler doesn't cut it for you.– Ian C.Jun 14, 2011 at 13:56
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1Column-based selection won't help if the CSV has varying-width fields, right?– Alan ShutkoAug 22, 2015 at 0:49
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13 Answers
Table Tool
Free and Open Source (MIT License).
Table Tool opens CSV files. It auto-detects character encoding and record separator (comma/semicolon/tab), and supports basic editing operations (like add row, delete row, add column delete column etc).
Table Tool can convert files to a different format.
Table Tool is also available on the Mac App Store.
Google Docs
I just used Google Docs for exactly this purpose but all I needed to do was extract a column of email addresses from a CSV file.
Note: Google Docs has file size limits, so this is not a silver bullet. A great bullet, but those limitations are critical when applied.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice does quite a good job now and is compatible even with OS X 10.9
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And it's fast to start and compatible with all the weird CSV gotchas floating around. +1 Jan 13, 2015 at 1:32
Numbers
Disclaimer: Free on new Macs
Apple Numbers also opens and saves to CSV. Just had to add to the list.
Numbers:
Save as CSV after editing:
Note that you can choose text encoding as well when exporting if needed for other systems.
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1Yep, that works. For me, Textastic or TextWrangler and Numbers work just fine.– bjbkAug 22, 2015 at 0:51
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Is it possible to just save edits to an exisiting CSV file in place, i.e. just by pressing a shortcut key or click a menu item, without confirming the dialogues? Nov 4, 2015 at 9:56
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4Numbers doesn't really edit CSV. It imports and exports them, which is a much more awkward (and often useless) workflow.– oromeDec 24, 2015 at 16:32
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Numbers is really confusing, I'm here looking for an alternative because I hate it. Oct 20, 2021 at 14:29
DB Browser for SQLite
Not an obvious candidate but very powerful (and free).
Steps
- Create an empty Database
- Import Table form CSV file
- With various import options
- Edit, search, plot the data
- Export your edits as (new) CSV file
NeoOffice
The latest version of NeoOffice works fine (in that it supports Versions etc) but you need to donate a small amount of money to download it before the end of August 2011.
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324$ yuck, to test a beta, probably never... others are paying you to test beta :)– sorinAug 11, 2011 at 17:34
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I highly recommend NeoOffice. I have used it for eight years. It is a fork of OpenOffice and LibreOffice with Mac OS-specific features and fully suports Mac OS 10.7 Lion. You can download and use version 3.1 for free; only the most recent version 3.2 requires a donation.– user9290Dec 24, 2011 at 18:34
csveditor (Java)
Very simple (no undo), java program (some may stop reading here ;) - does the job
You have to create an empty table upon launch but then you can open any file.
Screenshot:
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Free Microsoft Office Online
What better product than Excel is there to open and manipulate CSV files?
With this option, you don't need to install anything. It has the convenience of Google Docs but the guaranteed compatibility of MS Office.
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Users should be aware of the character encoding issues with Excel, although this may or may not be an issue. See this stackoverflow question– bjbkOct 20, 2021 at 15:53
OpenRefine
When interacting with large and messy text csv and other structured text files, I now typically go to Google Refine (now called OpenRefine). I've used it for TSV/CSV, JSON, and XML documents. In my experience it crashes rarely, and is pretty good for mangling data (you can apply transformations with scripting languages).
Its approach is more database-oriented, rather than spreadsheet oriented.
RStudio
RStudio wraps a really nice IDE-like environment around the popular, open source R language. The R language "is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display."1 It includes facilities for importing and exporting CSV data from its built-in data store so you can work on it with its powerful toolkit and then export it back out to CSV.
It's free (as in beer and speech) for use with paid options available if you need someone to yell at when things aren't working quite right.
VS Code
Free
Using an extension such as Simple CSV Editor
From the project:
Simple CSV Editor
Simple CSV Editor is just simple editor. Nothing much to say about it. It's much more readable thank plain text csv file. IMO very useful if you have a lot of text in your csv - if you you it as dictionary.
How to run
Use command palette ( shift + ctrl + p / ctrl + p and then type '>' ) and find Simple CSV Editor. Press enter ;)
Apache Open Office
Free. Reads, writes, creates CSV, Excel, Word and an number of other formats.
XTabulator
XTabulator edits CSV but is not free.
XTabulator is a tabular data file editor for Mac OS X. With XTabulator, you can edit, manipulate, massage, slice, and dice comma-separated (CSV), tab-separated (TAB), or anything-separated files quickly and easily.
