What is a good light-weight CSV viewer?

Question

Are there any good lightweight CSV viewers out there? I would like something that easily refreshes a file after it has been modified. A quick google search didn't turn up any clear winners.

I'd prefer not to have to open Excel each time since it locks the file. This prevents any other programs from updating the file.

This seems like a cool project, can the viewer be readonly? – tofutim May 26 '11 at 16:28 — tofutim, May 26 '11 at 16:28
Just use a basic text editor eg notepad++ – Longball27 May 26 '11 at 16:30 — Longball27, May 26 '11 at 16:30

score 128 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '15 at 16:38

128

This is for viewing only, using Powershell...

GUI Display; supports sorting, filtering:

    Import-Csv yourfile.csv |Out-GridView

Console Display:

    Import-Csv yourfile.csv |Format-Table -AutoSize

or:

    Import-Csv yourfile.csv |Format-List

For additional sorting and filtering options, pipe through where-object and sort-object cmdlets

answered Sep 24 '15 at 16:38

Kevin

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Is there a vertical column format? – Derek Mahar Jul 10 '17 at 20:15
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That was AWESOME. One thing to note though, if you want to specify the delimiter (for not-so-much-comma separated values) use `-delimiter ';'` – Stelios Adamantidis Dec 20 '17 at 12:05
Is there anyway I can automate this from Windows Explorer or from the right click menu? – Farrel May 27 '19 at 19:23
This is wonderful, it even recognizes tab-separated files automatically. Not even excel does that... – Antonio Sesto Oct 27 '22 at 07:36

score 30 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 19 '17 at 05:56

30

I use Nirsoft's CSVFileView. It is a simple lightweight read-only csv viewer.

Note: due to password recovery tools on Nirsoft's site many virus checkers will block executables downloaded from there.

edited Jul 19 '17 at 05:56

Matthew Lock

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answered Nov 14 '14 at 13:18

robochat

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This does exactly what you want. Lightweight, but rich with options. One you'll want is Auto-refresh (and maybe partial refresh). Filters can help you see only the data you're interested in. A very useful tool. – yosh m Sep 22 '16 at 15:08
3

The Nirsoft site is chock-full of great tools – Matthew Lock Dec 20 '16 at 07:00
There is also https://csviewer.com/ – endo64 Jul 03 '23 at 21:17

score 21 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 19 '15 at 02:14

21

If your system has Cygwin, column -t in a terminal window is what I like to use.

$ cat file.csv
1,2,3,4
A,B,C,D
i,ii,iii,iv,v
foo,bar,foo foo,foobar
No commas

$ column -t -s"," file.csv
1          2    3        4
A          B    C        D
i          ii   iii      iv      v
foo        bar  foo foo  foobar
No commas

In order to update with changes to the original as you requested, you can combine it with the watch command:

watch column -t -s, file.csv

edited Aug 19 '15 at 02:14

Giacomo1968

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answered May 26 '11 at 19:51

Costa

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Although the question is tagged **Windows**, `column -t` also appears on various flavors of *nix, including Mac OS, so please enjoy your ⬆ as much as I enjoyed your answer. – Dave Land Sep 04 '19 at 17:39

score 12 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 08 '20 at 22:40

12

These threads both point to CSVed:

I tried it and had some issues with larger files (4000000 rows) with lots of columns (313), so YMMV.

I usually just use the BSD column utility. It's part of the util-linux package on windows:

edited Jan 08 '20 at 22:40

KyleMit

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answered Dec 30 '11 at 14:08

Chris Betti

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score 8 · Answer 5 · edited Mar 16 '16 at 21:18

8

You could try Ron's Editor - it will do what you want, is MUCH better than Excel for editing CSV files IMHO (that's why I wrote it), and I will let you decide if its light enough ;-)

edited Mar 16 '16 at 21:18

akmozo

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answered Dec 12 '12 at 13:25

Aaron Stewart

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Nice tool.... may have to purchase that! – Brian Adkins Jan 08 '13 at 17:49
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Waaaay too expensive for personal needs – ikashnitsky Sep 08 '15 at 12:09

score 3 · Answer 6 · edited Sep 18 '14 at 19:07

3

Beacuse I was unhappy with how Excel displays CSV files, I produced a small executable designed to display CSV files. I recently made it available at http://csvquickviewer.com/ It’s only available for Windows because its writing in .NET

It does not need configuration but allows filtering, searching etc.

edited Sep 18 '14 at 19:07

jub0bs

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answered Sep 18 '14 at 18:26

Raphael Nöldner

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are you talking about this link https://sourceforge.net/projects/csvquickviewer/ as your link is not working ? – vibs2006 Dec 15 '20 at 12:01

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Feb 17 '17 at 18:32

Finally find one can instantly open large files, and automatically detect the delimiter: The V File Viewer from http://www.fileviewer.com/ 20 days free trial. $20 to buy.

Another one, which is extremely fast and also automatically detect the delimiter is Delimit from http://delimitware.com 15 days free trail. $49 / year. Kind of expensive.

score -1 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 23 '16 at 17:12

-1

OKFN's DataPipes SaaS Tool is an option for using in-browser.
GitHub automagically renders CSV into tables, providing another in-browser option, along with more functionality.

answered Mar 23 '16 at 17:12

albert

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score -1 · Answer 9 · answered May 26 '11 at 16:26

-1

I believe there are Free excel viewers out there on Microsoft's site. And I think the native wordpad/write can also open up CSV files.

answered May 26 '11 at 16:26

Sivaram

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score -1 · Answer 10 · answered May 26 '11 at 16:26

-1

If you just want to look at the file, why not use a text editor? The better ones will notice a refresh and prompt you if you want to reload the file. However, they won't separate the values out into different columns for you; they will only display the contents. Both UltraEdit and TextPad have been reliable for me in the past.

answered May 26 '11 at 16:26

Ryan

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Text editors won't format the columns nicely. It would also be nice to have some simple functions built-in like SUM(). – syvex May 26 '11 at 16:46

What is a good light-weight CSV viewer?

10 Answers10

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