
If you just want to view the contents of a CSV file or work with it as a spreadsheet, that’s all you need to do.

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If you don’t have Excel, you could upload the file to a service like Google Sheets or install a free office suite like LibreOffice Calc to view it.Įxcel and other spreadsheet programs present the contents of a. If it doesn’t open in Excel, you can right-click the CSV file and select Open With > Excel. For example, if you have Microsoft Excel installed on your computer, you can just double-click a. You can also open CSV files in spreadsheet programs, which make them easier to read.

How to Open a CSV File in a Spreadsheet Program You’ll need to scroll horizontally to read the full lines. Click Format > Word Wrap to disable it and make each line of data stay on its own line for improved readability. In Notepad, the “Word Wrap” feature can make the data harder to read. If it was exported from a password manager like LastPass, you’d see different website login entries on their own line here. For example, if the CSV file was exported from a contacts program, you’d see information about each contact here, with the contact’s details sorted onto a new line. You’ll see the plaintext list of data in the CSV file. To view a CSV file in Notepad++ after installing it, right-click the CSV file and select the “Edit With Notepad++” command. In this case, we recommend you use a more capable plain text file editor like Notepad++. Notepad may have trouble opening the CSV file if it’s very large. To view the contents of a CSV file in Notepad, right-click it in File Explorer or Windows Explorer, and then select the “Edit” command. The resulting data is human-readable and can be easily viewed with a text editor like Notepad or a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel. CSV files are designed to be a way to easily export data and import it into other programs. Some CSV files may not even have the headers at the top, and some may use quotation marks to surround each bit of data, but that’s the basic format. They can be more complicated than that, and can contain thousands of lines, more entries on each line, or long strings of text. You’d get a file containing text like this: For example, let’s say you have a few contacts in a contact manager, and you export them as a CSV file. A CSV file has a fairly simple structure.
