View CSV without Excel: filter, sort & convert to JSON

Excel mangles CSVs: drops leading zeros, reformats dates, caps rows. The CSV viewer doesn't — it shows raw values in a sortable table, filters instantly, and converts to JSON for APIs. All offline, nothing uploaded.

1. Open any CSV in 3 seconds

Drag orders.csv into the viewer. Example:

id,name,total,paid
1,Asha,42,true
2,Rahim,17,false
3,Mina,99,true

Click a column header to sort, type in filter to narrow rows. ZIP codes like 02139 stay text — Excel would turn them into 2139.

2. CSV to JSON for developers

[
  { "id": "1", "name": "Asha", "total": "42", "paid": "true" },
  { "id": "2", "name": "Rahim", "total": "17", "paid": "false" }
]

One click converts headers to keys. Paste that JSON into the JSON formatter to validate, then process it with map/filter/reduce.

3. Fix the 3 CSV breakages

• Semicolons vs commas: European exports use ;. The viewer auto-detects; Excel often doesn't.
• Quoted commas: "Dhaka, Bangladesh" is one cell, not two — the viewer respects quotes.
• Encoding: UTF-8 with BOM vs Windows-1252 breaks Bengali/emoji. The viewer preserves UTF-8.

Private by design

Sales exports contain customer data. Server-side converters upload it. FastCompiler parses locally — close the tab and it's gone. See Privacy.

4. Large files: what to expect

A 10,000-row export opens instantly; a 200,000-row dump still works but filtering feels slower on phones — narrow with the filter box first, then sort. If the file exceeds ~50MB, split it by date range before opening in any browser tool. Tip: keep the original filename (orders-2026-08.csv) so you can trace any JSON you export back to its source.

5. Excel vs viewer — when to use which

Use Excel/Google Sheets for formulas, charts and pivot tables. Use the viewer for inspection and conversion: verifying delimiters, checking raw values, searching 100k rows, and producing clean JSON for the JSON formatter and array-methods workflow. They complement each other — inspect here, analyze there.

6. Checklist before you share the export

Strip hidden columns with emails or tokens, confirm the header row has no duplicates (id,id_1 breaks converters), save as UTF-8, and keep a README line noting delimiter, date range and source system. Your future self — and anyone consuming your JSON — will thank you.