CSV Delimiters and Quoted Fields: A Practical Guide
Convert comma, semicolon, tab and pipe data without breaking delimiters inside quoted cells.
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Why CSV delimiters vary
Comma is common, but spreadsheet applications in regions that use commas as decimal separators may prefer semicolons. Tabs and pipes are also common in exports.
Changing delimiters with a simple find-and-replace can corrupt cells that legitimately contain commas or other separator characters.
Quoted fields protect cell content
A proper CSV parser recognizes quotation marks and keeps delimiters inside quoted cells as part of the value.
After conversion, open a small sample and check row counts, column counts and any fields that contain punctuation or line breaks.