Paste your broken CSV here and click "Fix CSV!!" to repair itEnter Broken CSV

What is CSV Fixer?

Got a CSV that won't import? Ragged rows, unescaped quotes, the wrong delimiter, a stray BOM, smart quotes copy-pasted from a Word doc — any of these can blow up Excel, pandas, or your database loader. CSV Fixer reads your messy CSV (Comma-Separated Values) and returns a clean version that actually parses.

Unlike JSON, CSV has no strict spec — RFC 4180 is a guideline, not a law. Excel, Google Sheets, Postgres COPY, and Python's csv module all bend the rules differently. This tool repairs the structural issues that cause hard parse failures: column-count drift, unbalanced quotes, lines that quietly broke in the middle of a quoted field. Once it's clean, run it through our CSV Validator to confirm.

How it works: when you hit Fix, your CSV is sent to our server and repaired by an AI model, and the result comes straight back. We don't store it. Because it's an AI repair, not a fixed set of rules, skim the output before you load it anywhere, especially rows near the problem it fixed. No account needed.

How to Use the CSV Fixer

Three steps. Each one matches a button on this page — there is nothing hidden.

Paste Broken CSV or Load the Sample

Drop your CSV into the left editor. Click Sample CSV to load a deliberately broken order file with the kind of error people actually run into — a half-quoted field that swallows the rest of the line. Example of broken CSV:

orderId,customer,product,quantity,total
ORD-1001,"Ava Chen",Wireless Mouse,2,49.98
ORD-1002,Marco Rivera,"USB-C Hub,1,79.99
ORD-1003,"Priya Patel",Mechanical Keyboard,1,129.99
ORD-1004,"Lee, Jordan",Webcam HD,1,59.99

Row 3 has an unclosed quote — "USB-C Hub opens but never closes, so the parser swallows everything after it. Typical real-world breakage.

Click Fix CSV!!

Hit the green Fix CSV!! button. Your CSV is sent to our server, where an AI model is asked to repair quoting and column counts without changing any values, and to keep your delimiter (comma, semicolon, tab or pipe). A loading overlay shows while it works; most small files come back in a few seconds.

Review the Fixed CSV

The right panel shows the cleaned-up CSV. Skim it, copy it, and load it into your database, spreadsheet, or pipeline. If it still misbehaves, paste it into our CSV Validator for a second opinion or our CSV Formatter to align the columns visually.

When You'd Actually Use This

Database Import Failures

Postgres COPY and MySQL LOAD DATA INFILE are unforgiving — one stray quote and the whole file is rejected. Fix the file, retry the import, go home on time.

Excel & Google Sheets Exports

European Excel exports use ; as the delimiter and prepend a UTF-8 BOM that breaks pandas read_csv. The fixer normalises the delimiter and strips the BOM so your pandas pipeline just runs.

Hand-Edited Data

Someone opened the CSV in Notepad, fixed a typo, saved it — and now the line endings are mixed and the row count is off by one. The fixer handles mixed \r\n/\n, ragged rows, and trailing whitespace without you having to spot the diff manually.

Migrations Between Tools

Moving customer or product data from one SaaS to another and the receiving tool refuses the import? Run the file through here first — most of the rejections are quote-escaping or column-count issues that the fixer cleans up in one pass.

Common Questions

Is my CSV stored or sent anywhere I can't see?

Your CSV is sent to our server and processed by an AI model so the fix can run, then the result comes straight back. We don't store it. Even so, sensitive data (PII, payment data, anything under an NDA) shouldn't go through any online tool, ours included. For that, run a local Python csv script.

What kinds of CSV errors can it actually fix?

The common ones: ragged rows (rows with fewer or more columns than the header), unescaped quotes inside quoted fields, fields containing commas or newlines that should be quoted but aren't, mixed \r\n/\n line endings, a stray UTF-8 BOM at the start, and smart quotes pasted from word processors. The model is told to follow RFC 4180 quoting. It usually gets these right, but it's a model, so check the rows it touched.

Will it change my actual data values?

It shouldn't. The model is instructed to fix only structure and quoting, and not to add, drop, rename or reorder anything. In practice that holds for typical files, but an AI model can't guarantee it, so compare row counts and spot-check a few values (a cell like 79.99 should still read 79.99) before you import the result.

Does it keep my delimiter?

The model is asked to keep whatever delimiter your file already uses (comma, semicolon, tab or pipe), so semicolon files should come back with semicolons. If you want to switch delimiters afterwards, the CSV Formatter does that deterministically.

What about really huge files?

There is a 64 KB cap on the input. That's roughly a few hundred rows. For bigger exports, fix the broken rows by hand (the CSV Validator lists them by line) or use a streaming tool like csvkit or a quick pandas script.

It said it can't fix my CSV. Now what?

Some structures are too ambiguous to repair safely — for example, a file where you can't tell whether a comma inside a field was meant to be a separator or a literal comma. In those cases, eyeball the first few lines, fix the worst offender by hand, then run it through here again for the rest. You can also try our CSV Validator to see exactly which line is upsetting the parser.

Other CSV Tools You Might Need

Fixing CSV is one step. Once it parses cleanly, these tools take it the rest of the way: