What this guide covers
Exports from a shop, an analytics tool or a shared report often arrive as a CSV or Excel file. You rarely need to edit them. You just want to look: find one row, check a column, sort by a date. Opening a full spreadsheet program for that is slow, and its bright white grid is hard on the eyes late in the day.
The CSV / Excel Viewer shows your file as a calm dark table in the browser. You can switch between sheets, filter the rows and sort any column. The file stays on your device and is never rewritten. Here is how it works.
Step by step
- 1
Add your file
Press Choose file or drop a .csv or .xlsx file onto the page. CSV and Excel files are read in your browser, with no server conversion.
- 2
Pick a sheet
If the workbook has more than one sheet, choose it in the toolbar. You can switch between sheets without reopening the file.
- 3
Filter the rows
Type in the filter box to keep only the rows that match. It is a quick way to find one customer, one date or one code in a long export.
- 4
Sort a column
Click a column header to sort it ascending, and click again to reverse the order. The headers and the first row stay readable on the dark surface.
Making an export easier to inspect
Start by narrowing the data, then sort. A filter on one word, a customer name or a code leaves only the rows you care about, and sorting a column afterwards makes the highest or latest values obvious. The row count tells you how much data is left after each step, which is a quick way to confirm that a filter did what you expected.
Remember what this tool is. It is a reading surface, not a spreadsheet, so it will not recalculate formulas or draw charts. If a formula cell shows a number, that is the value the file already contained. When you need to change data or run calculations, open the file in your usual spreadsheet program.
Tips
- Narrow the view first, then sort, so you compare only the rows that matter.
- Use the row count to check how much data is left after you filter.
Good to know
- This is a viewer, not a spreadsheet. It does not recalculate formulas or draw charts. Excel formulas appear as their calculated values.
- If special characters look wrong in a CSV, export the file again as UTF-8 and reopen it.
- Very large workbooks depend on browser memory and may take longer to open.