This tool pulls just the columns you want out of a CSV and returns them as clean tab-separated values, ready to paste into a spreadsheet or another tool. Paste your data, tick the columns to keep, and copy the result. It is handy for trimming a wide export down to a few fields, or reordering and isolating columns without opening a spreadsheet.
How it works
The CSV is parsed with an RFC 4180-aware parser, so quoted fields can safely contain commas, line breaks and escaped double quotes ("") without breaking the column boundaries. If the first row is a header, its names are shown as labels so you can pick columns by name. You select which columns to keep, and the tool re-emits only those, in order, as tab-separated rows. If you tick nothing, it returns every column — a quick CSV-to-TSV conversion. You can also change the delimiter for semicolon- or tab-separated source files.
Example
Given this CSV:
id,name,email
1,"Ada Lovelace",[email protected]
2,"Lin, Jr.",[email protected]Selecting only name and email returns:
name email
Ada Lovelace [email protected]
Lin, Jr. [email protected]Note that the comma inside the quoted “Lin, Jr.” is preserved as part of the value, not treated as a column break.
When to use a column extractor
CSV exports from CRMs, analytics platforms, and database tools routinely include dozens of columns when you only need a handful for your next step. Rather than opening the file in a spreadsheet and manually deleting columns (which risks accidentally editing data, triggers auto-format rules, and can corrupt IDs with leading zeros), pasting into the extractor is faster and non-destructive.
Common use cases:
- Preparing a mail-merge list. An export from your CRM may include 40 columns;
you only need
first_name,email, andaccount_tier. - Feeding an API import. Many APIs accept CSV but are strict about column count and names — pull out exactly the columns the schema expects.
- Reordering columns. Tick the columns in the order you want them; the output preserves your selection order, not the source order.
- CSV to TSV conversion. Leaving all columns selected and copying the output gives you tab-separated values that paste into Excel or Google Sheets without the quoting complications of commas.
Delimiter handling
The tool supports comma, semicolon, tab and pipe (|) as input delimiters. European
CSV exports often use semicolons because the comma is used as a decimal separator
in those locales — switch the delimiter setting before parsing to avoid the whole
row appearing as a single column.
Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded.