About the TSV Viewer
TSV files come from database exports, bioinformatics tools, analytics platforms and spreadsheet copies. Opening one in a text editor shows columns that do not line up because tab stops vary. The viewer parses the text as tab-delimited and renders a proper table with row numbers and a fixed header, so wide files stay readable.
Cells are shown exactly as written; nothing is typed or trimmed. The status line reports rows and columns. Files are read locally and never uploaded, which matters for the kind of data that usually lives in TSV exports.
A few parsing details explain most surprises. The split is on real tab characters only, so a file that lines its columns up with runs of spaces renders as a single column, and that is the quickest way to tell space-aligned output apart from a genuine TSV. The header row fixes the column count: a short row is padded with blanks rather than shifting its neighbours left, and any surplus cells beyond the last header are not displayed. A trailing tab on every line produces a real empty final column, which is the usual sign that an export appended a delimiter to each row.
Use it to check an export before it goes into a pipeline, to find the row where a database dump started misbehaving, or simply to read a file that no installed application will open. The same input can be converted with TSV to JSON or TSV to CSV, or turned into a documentation table with CSV to Markdown.
How to use
- Upload the .tsv file or paste tab-separated text.
- Scroll the table; the status shows the row and column counts.
- Use a related tool to convert the data if needed.
Common questions
- How is this different from the CSV Viewer?
- The delimiter is fixed to tab, so commas inside cells never split columns. The CSV Viewer auto-detects and can also read tabs.
- Can it open .txt files?
- Yes, as long as the content is tab-separated.
- Is there a file size limit?
- Practical limits are set by your browser; tens of megabytes work.