Why Do CSV Column Separators Break?
Regional operating system settings create conflicts between European and International software. Here is how CleanMyCSV fixes delimiter bugs:
1. The Regional Excel Delimiter Conflict
In Europe, Microsoft Excel uses the comma (,) as a decimal separator (e.g. 12,50 €). To avoid confusion, Excel exports CSV columns using semicolons (;). However, US web apps like Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, and Shopify expect commas (,) as column separators, causing all attributes to merge into column A.
2. Text Protection (Commas Inside Quoted Strings)
Basic "Find & Replace" tools ruin CSV files by converting commas contained inside street addresses or product descriptions (e.g., "123 Main St, Suite 400"). CleanMyCSV uses a context-aware parser (PapaParse engine) that respects quoted boundaries and only converts actual column boundaries.
3. Decimal & Currency Conversion Integration
When converting semicolons to commas, numerical values like 10,50 must simultaneously be converted into dot decimals (10.50) so US software reads them as true mathematical numbers instead of text. CleanMyCSV handles delimiter and decimal normalization in a single step.
4. Automatic UTF-8 BOM Encoding Upgrade
In addition to delimiter conversion, CleanMyCSV converts legacy Windows ANSI and MacRoman encodings to UTF-8 with BOM. This ensures your converted file opens with clean accents and aligned headers across all operating systems.