.tsv file format
View, inspect, merge, and learn how TSV files are used for tabular data, exports, imports, datasets, spreadsheets, and development workflows.
Format
.tsv
Original files stay unchanged. Tools download a new file when output is generated.
Every tool listed here works with .tsv files and runs in your browser. If the task you need is not here, the related formats below may cover it.
A TSV file separates fields with tab characters. Because tabs are rare inside real data — unlike commas, which appear in names, addresses, and free text constantly — TSV files usually need no quoting or escaping at all. That makes them far easier to parse correctly than CSV.
TSV has no widely observed convention for a field that does contain a tab or a newline. Where CSV has quoting rules, TSV mostly assumes the problem does not arise, so data containing tabs has to be cleaned or escaped before export. Support is also narrower: some tools that happily import CSV do not offer TSV.
Copy a range of cells from Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers and what lands on the clipboard is tab-separated text. That is why pasting spreadsheet data into a plain text editor produces a TSV file, and why TSV is a convenient interchange format between a spreadsheet and a script.
For correctness, often yes — tabs collide with real data far less than commas do, so parsing is simpler and less error-prone. For compatibility, CSV is more widely supported.
It will break the column alignment, because TSV has no standard escaping. Strip or replace tabs in the data before exporting.
Yes, but import it via Data, then From Text/CSV, and set the delimiter to tab. Double-clicking a .tsv file does not always map columns correctly.