Tidy the text and structure of any CSV
Some problems have nothing to do with what the file is about. Whether it holds products, survey answers or sensor readings, a CSV can be saved in the wrong encoding, padded with invisible spaces, broken up by empty rows, or given headers that no script can address. These faults are why a lookup returns #N/A, why a database load stops halfway, or why a column that looks complete has gaps.
The tools here fix the container rather than the content, so they are the usual first step before any of the more specific cleanups on this site.
The order that works
- 1
Repair the encoding first: every later step compares text, and garbled characters make equal values look different.
- 2
Strip hidden spaces, HTML tags and empty rows and columns, so what you see in each cell is what is really there.
- 3
Rename the headers if the file is going into code or a database, and leave them alone if an import template expects the originals.
- 4
Flag rows with blanks in the columns that must be filled, and fix them before the file moves on.
Text inside the cells
Characters and markup that make values display or compare wrongly.
Fix CSV Encoding
Detects how the file was saved and turns Café back into Café, writing clean UTF-8.
Trim Whitespace
Removes leading, trailing and doubled spaces from every cell, the usual cause of failed lookups.
Remove HTML TagsPro
Keeps the text of product descriptions exported from Shopify, WooCommerce or a CMS and drops the tags.
Rows, columns and headers
The shape of the file: what counts as a row, a column and a name for it.
Remove Blank Rows
Drops rows of bare commas and columns that have a header but no data underneath.
Clean Column Headers
Rewrites headers in lower-case snake_case for SQL, pandas and import mappers.
Find Missing ValuesPro
Flags every row with a blank in the columns you mark as required, before an import trips over it.
CSV to Excel Cleaner
A combined pass for a raw export you are about to open in Excel, with headers, dates and blanks tidied.
Guides for file problems
Explanations of the symptoms these tools fix, with the manual fix in Excel or Google Sheets.
Why your CSV shows é and ’ in Excel, and how to fix it
Where é and ’ come from, and how to open the file so they don’t appear.
VLOOKUP returns #N/A but the values match: fixing hidden spaces
Finding the invisible characters that make two matching values fail a lookup.
CSV vs XLSX: which format to use for exports and imports
What each format keeps and loses, and which to choose for an export or an import.