CSV Editor for Visual Studio

Download this extension from the Visual Studio Marketplace or get the CI build.

Finally, a proper CSV/TSV editing experience in Visual Studio. CSV Editor transforms flat, hard-to-read data files into colorful, navigable documents.

✨ Key Features at a Glance

• Syntax Highlighting — Color-coded columns for instant visual parsing
• Column Alignment — Align columns visually with a single command for table-like readability
• Sticky Header Row — Lock the header row at the top while scrolling through large files
• Shrink Columns — Remove leading/trailing whitespace from all cells
• Alternate Row Colors — Toggle alternating row backgrounds for improved readability
• Copy as Markdown — Copy selection as a formatted Markdown table
• Smart Header Detection — Automatically identifies header rows
• QuickInfo Tooltips — Hover over any cell to see column name, index, and detected data type
• Column Sorting — Sort ascending or descending directly from the tooltip
• Error Detection — Rows with inconsistent column counts are highlighted
• Go To Column — Jump to any column by number
• Large File Support — Optimized for files with 100K+ lines
• Binary Character Handling — Automatically sanitizes files with null bytes and other binary characters

Supports: CSV (comma), TSV (tab), semicolon, and pipe (|) delimited files — delimiter is detected automatically

Why CSV Editor?

Working with CSV files in a plain text editor is painful:

• Hard to read — Without column colors, data blends into an unreadable wall of text
• Easy to misalign — One wrong comma and your entire row is shifted
• No context — Which column is this value in? What's the header name?
• Manual sorting — Need to sort by a column? Time to open Excel or write a script

CSV Editor solves these problems while keeping you in Visual Studio where you belong.

Features

Syntax Highlighting

Each column gets its own color, making it easy to visually track data across rows. Colors cycle through a palette designed to work with both light and dark themes.

Column Alignment

Right-click and select Align CSV Columns to visually align columns for perfect readability. This uses virtual alignment (adornments) — your file content is not modified.

Sticky Header Row

Right-click and select Toggle Sticky Header Row to lock the header row at the top of the editor while scrolling. This is invaluable for:

• Large files where scrolling loses sight of column headers
• Quick reference of column names while editing data
• Working with wide tables that require horizontal scrolling

The sticky header:

• Displays column names with the same color-coding as the data
• Stays synchronized with horizontal scrolling
• Works seamlessly with Column Alignment when enabled
• Is non-interactive — clicks pass through to the editor below

Shrink Columns

Right-click and select Shrink CSV Columns to remove leading and trailing whitespace from all cells. This is useful to:

• Clean up messy data with accidental spaces
• Reduce file size by removing unnecessary whitespace
• Prepare data for processing by systems that don't trim automatically

Alternate Row Colors

Right-click and select Toggle Alternate Row Colors to highlight odd and even rows with alternating background colors. This significantly improves readability for:

• Wide tables with many columns
• Tables viewed in word-wrap mode
• Quick visual scanning of data

Copy as Markdown Table

Right-click and select Copy as Markdown Table to copy the selection (or entire file if nothing is selected) as a formatted Markdown table. Perfect for:

• Pasting into GitHub issues, PRs, or README files
• Documentation and wikis
• Slack, Teams, or other Markdown-enabled chat

Example output:

| Name  | Age | City     |
|-------|-----|----------|
| Alice | 30  | New York |
| Bob   | 25  | London   |

QuickInfo Tooltips

Hover over any cell to see:

• Column name (from header) or column number
• Column index (e.g., "Column #3 of 8")
• Detected data type (Text, Number, Date, Boolean, etc.)
• Sort links — Click to sort the entire file by that column (ascending or descending)

Sort links appear when hovering over cells in the first row, whether or not the file has a header.

Error Detection

Rows with too many or too few columns are flagged with squiggles, helping you catch data issues before they cause problems downstream.

Go To Column

Use Edit > Go To > Go To Column (or the command palette) to jump directly to a specific column by number.

Large File Support

CSV Editor is optimized for large files with thousands of rows:

• Smart caching — Parsed lines are cached to avoid redundant work
• Background validation — Error detection runs in the background for files over 50K lines
• Sampled column widths — Alignment uses sampling for files over 50K lines, keeping the editor responsive
• Virtualized rendering — Only visible rows are processed, regardless of file size

Binary Character Handling

CSV files sometimes contain binary characters (null bytes, control characters) that can cause problems. CSV Editor automatically:

• Sanitizes binary content — Replaces binary characters with the Unicode replacement character (�)
• Preserves whitespace — Tabs, newlines, and carriage returns are kept intact
• Allows editing — Files remain fully editable and saveable after sanitization
• Works automatically — Just open the file normally, no special steps needed

The sanitization happens transparently when you open a CSV/TSV file containing binary characters. The cleaning process is optimized for files of any size using a single-pass algorithm.

How can I help?

If you enjoy using the extension, please give it a ★★★★★ rating on the Visual Studio Marketplace.

Should you encounter bugs or have feature requests, head over to the GitHub repo to open an issue if one doesn't already exist.

Pull requests are also very welcome, as I can't always get around to fixing all bugs myself. This is a personal passion project, so my time is limited.

Another way to help out is to sponsor me on GitHub.