Open a file

Smart CSV opens .csv, .tsv and plain text files with comma, semicolon, tab, pipe, colon or space separated values. It works out the separator, the quote character and the text encoding on its own.

Open a file

1. On the home screen, tap the open-file icon at the end of the search field, or tap + and choose Open CSV.
2. Pick the file from Files, iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or any place the picker shows.
3. The file opens in the table. Big files show a progress bar while they come in; Cancel stops the import and leaves everything as it was.

You can also start from the other side: in the Files app, or any app that can share a file, choose Open in Smart CSV or share the file to Smart CSV.

Every file you open is listed on the home screen, so next time it opens instantly.

Create CSV (under the same +) makes a new, empty file that is ready to type in.

Paste a table

To turn a table you copied into a file, tap + and choose Paste text.

1. Copy the table: cells from Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, a table from a web page or an email, or one an AI chat wrote for you.
2. Tap Paste, or paste into the box yourself. You can fix the text before going on.
3. Tap Continue. The text becomes a new file called Pasted text and opens like any other file, so you can check that it looks right.

• Cells copied from a spreadsheet and Markdown tables (| a | b |, as AI chats write them) are turned into ordinary comma-separated rows.
• Any other text is kept as it is, and Smart CSV works out its separator.
• Blank lines at the start and end are left out.
• On iPhone and iPad, iOS asks once whether Smart CSV may paste from the app you copied in.

Keep a file at the top

The home list puts the file you changed last first. To keep a file you use often at the top, tap ⋯ on it and choose Add to favorites.

• Favorites get their own Favorites group above the other files, which are listed under Recent.
• To favorite several files at once, press and hold one, select the others, and tap Favorite at the bottom.
• ⋯ → Remove from favorites puts a file back in the recent list.
• A file stays a favorite when you rename it, and stops being one when you remove it from the list.

Your original is never changed

Smart CSV works on its own copy of the file. Your edits stay in that copy until you choose to write them to the file, and a file that lives in iCloud Drive or Google Drive is never changed there. To replace it, share the file back and save it over the original.

Check that it looks right

The first time you open a file it is read-only, with a card at the bottom asking Does this look right? The card says what Smart CSV found, for example Separator Semicolon · Header row · 12 columns · 3,400 rows.

Scroll the table and check that the columns are split where you expect.

• Looks right unlocks editing. The file is always read this way from now on, and is written back with the same separator and encoding.
• Adjust opens the import options (below) so you can change how it is read.

If the file has a title above its header, such as Sales report 2024 or # exported from …, Smart CSV reads it as a title rather than a row, and the card says so: Skipped 1 title line: Sales report 2024. If that line was really data, tap Adjust and set Title lines to 0.

If some rows don’t match the rest, the card says so, for example 12 rows have a different number of columns, first at row 340. That usually means the separator or the quote character is wrong.

You can search, sort and filter while the card is up. Editing waits until you answer.

Import options

To change how a file is read later, open it and tap ⋯ → Import options.

The top of the sheet has the settings. Below them, a live Preview shows the first rows as they would be read.

• Separator: Comma, Semicolon, Tab, Pipe, Colon or Space. The one Smart CSV detected has a small wand icon. Other lets you type your own, for example ~, or \t for a tab.
• Title lines: how many lines above the header are a title rather than rows. Smart CSV counts them on its own (the wand icon shows the detected number); the preview shows them above the table, marked Title. They are kept: written back when you save, and used as the title of a PDF.
• First row is the header: whether the first line after the title lines holds the column names. Turn it off when the file has no header line. See Files without a header.
• More options
  • Quote character: " or '.
  • Encoding: UTF-8, UTF-16, and the encodings older spreadsheet apps save in: Western European (Windows-1252, ISO-8859-1), Central European (Windows-1250), Cyrillic (Windows-1251), Vietnamese (Windows-1258), Japanese (Shift_JIS, EUC-JP), Chinese (GB18030/GBK) and Korean (EUC-KR). Pick another if letters in the preview look garbled.
  • Comment lines: lines further down that start with this character are skipped, and are not kept when you write the file. It is None by default, so every line below the header is a row; pick # or another character if your file has comment lines among its rows. Comment lines at the top count as title lines and need no setting.
• Reset to detected puts everything back.

The preview also spots likely mistakes and offers the fix as a button, for example The rows split evenly with Semicolon → Use Semicolon.

Caution

Importing again reads the file afresh, so edits you made in Smart CSV are lost. The app warns you first.

When a file won’t open

If Smart CSV can’t read a file, the viewer says Couldn’t open this file instead of showing an empty table.

• Try other settings opens the import options, in case the separator or encoding is wrong.
• Report problem writes an email to the developer. You choose whether to attach the file. It goes only in that email, and you can check it before sending. Large files send only the start and the part where reading failed.

If reading fails partway, the rows read so far stay on screen with Only part of this file was read, so a cut-off file isn’t mistaken for a complete one.

When the original file changes

Smart CSV remembers where each file came from.

• Picking the same file again opens the copy you already have. If the original changed and you haven’t edited your copy, the new version is loaded.
• If both changed, you choose: Open my version, Load the new version (your edits in Smart CSV are lost), or Keep both (the new version comes in as a second file).
• The home list shows Newer version in iCloud Drive (or wherever the file lives) under a file whose original changed. Pull down on the list to check again.
• ⋯ on a file (or in the viewer) → Reload from original copies it in again. If the original was moved or deleted, Unlink from original stops Smart CSV looking for it.

A file sent from Mail, a chat app or AirDrop has no original to go back to, so none of this applies to it.

Good to know

• A first line such as sep=; sets the separator and is not shown as a row.
• Title lines are found when every line above the header is blank, starts with #, or has text in its first cell only (Title;;;; as spreadsheet apps save it), up to 10 lines.
• Spaces at the start and end of each cell are removed.
• Blank lines show as empty rows and are written back as blank lines. A file of only blank rows opens as an empty table you can fill in.
• Rows with different numbers of cells all keep their cells: the table is as wide as the longest row, and shorter rows get empty cells at the end.
• A cell can hold up to 100,000 characters. If the import finds a longer one, it is almost always a quote that never closes; the import options open and say on which line.