Markdown Table ↔ CSV

What this tool does

Convert a Markdown table into CSV or TSV, or turn CSV, TSV, semicolon-delimited, and pasted spreadsheet data into a Markdown table. Quotes, commas, escaped pipes, empty cells, and Unicode are all preserved, and rows that do not match the header width are reported rather than quietly padded.

Pasting from a spreadsheet

When you copy cells from Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers, what lands on the clipboard is usually tab-separated text — one tab between columns, one line per row. That is why pasting a spreadsheet selection straight into the box works: the delimiter is detected automatically, and the tool reports which one it found. Comma, semicolon, tab, and pipe are all recognised, as is the sep= line Excel sometimes writes at the top of a CSV.

Why TSV is the better choice for spreadsheets

Going the other way — a Markdown table into a spreadsheet — the output format matters. Spreadsheet applications generally split pasted text into columns when the columns are separated by tabs, so TSV usually pastes straight into cells while CSV often lands as one column of text that then needs an import step. If you are taking a table out of a ChatGPT or Claude answer and into Excel or Google Sheets, choose TSV.

Behaviour differs between applications, versions, and platforms, so this is a rule of thumb rather than a guarantee. CSV remains the right choice when the file is destined for a program or a data pipeline rather than a paste.

What is preserved, and what is not

• Commas, quotes, and delimiters inside a value are quoted correctly rather than splitting the row.
• A literal pipe becomes \| in Markdown and comes back as a plain |.
• Empty cells survive, including a trailing empty cell at the end of a row.
• Unicode, accents, and non-English text pass through untouched.
• Rows that do not match the header width are converted exactly as written and reported — never padded out or trimmed down.
• Column alignment (:---:) is dropped when converting to CSV, because CSV has no equivalent.

One conversion is genuinely lossy and the tool says so when it happens: a CSV cell containing a line break becomes <br> in Markdown, because a Markdown table cannot hold a real newline. Reading that Markdown with another tool will show the literal <br> rather than a line break, so multiline cells do not round-trip perfectly.

Privacy

The conversion runs locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored on our servers, or tracked.

Use cases

• Move a table from a ChatGPT or Claude answer into Excel or Google Sheets
• Turn a spreadsheet selection into a Markdown table for a README or pull request
• Convert exported CSV into documentation tables without hand-formatting pipes

Related tools

Cell contents are carried across as written, so **bold** stays **bold**. To strip Markdown formatting from text rather than convert a table, use Markdown to Plain Text. To convert CSV to JSON, or to check how a CSV file parses, CSV Converter reports delimiters, row-width mismatches, and quoting problems.