It’s occurring to me that I have a number of types of data that I could store in a spreadsheet - but all I really need is an app that makes it easy to open, edit, and save CSV files. This will also give me the benefit that my code will have an easier time accessing the data.
I know Numbers/Excel can do this, but I don’t want the import/export hassle.
Does anybody else do this, and have an app they prefer? I see there are some options on the app store, but figured I’d check here first in case anybody has some firsthand recommendations.
“Easy CSV Editor” on the App Store is quite powerful for opening, editing, and saving CSV files. I haven’t used it much but it does find and replace and all kinds of formatting and row/column manipulations. And it’s a nice easy to use Swift design.
Take a look at Easy Data Transform. I’m not sure what kind of editing you need to do and whether it’s something you can do in this app, but you can work directly with CSV files without opening them in Excel.
I just took a look at Easy CVS Editor—Forget Easy Data Transform unless you really do need to do complex data transformation! Easy CVS Editor looks really nice—so nice, in fact, that I bought it.
I do enough work with CSVs that don’t require Excel’s overhead that it’s more than worth it. Also, Excel is powerful, but not exactly “Mac-assed.” A lot of things you can do with a right-click in any self-respecting Mac app requires using a function in Excel—e.g. changing the case of the text in a cell. I was delighted to see that Easy CSV Editor has a whole Text Transformations menu.
I just want to be able to edit it in something like a spreadsheet view. I realize I could edit the text itself in BBEdit - but I prefer the nicer visual.
That’s correct. The only drawback is Excel’s “overhead” if you don’t require most of its functionality. Interestingly enough, it’s actually easier to clean and conform CSV file data in Excel’s Power Query Module than it is in Excel proper. Excel was built for computation and analysis; some of the functionality that you might need to clean up a CSV file is either not there or is cumbersome to access.
+1 for Easy CSV Editor. I picked it up for what sounds like your exact use-case, and I haven’t looked back. It’s quick, easy, and is easier to use (and looks better) than Libre Office. I don’t use Microsoft products and Numbers is overkill for quick tables, although Numbers still looks awesome.
About 11 years ago, before I retired, I was working on a product that had dozens of configurations and potentially thousands. So I decided to define the configurations (and their model numbers) in a spreadsheet with a row for each product and a column for each configuration option. There were 56 columns. The systems in production would read the file, find the model number, and configure the product based on the line in the spreadsheet.
The file format was CSV. This was easy to read and parse in the production machines. Maintaining the file required an editor that could read the file and write revised versions. While I could have used basically any text editor on the file, since CSV is an ASCII format, I used Excel. I figured that anyone in the future (after I retired) could easily edit the file using Excel as it is basically a standard. Of course Numbers (I was the only Mac user in the company) or LibraOffice (AFAIK nobody used) could be used, and no matter what the choice it would be interchangeable. I’ll point out that after 11 years the product line is still being sold, and I expect that that CSV file still is being used.
At any rate, I never considered a pure CSV editor. Not necessary. And this was the largest CSV file I ever needed.
+1 for Easy CSV Editor. I do a lot of data imports into NetSuite for clients and got tired of Excel being ‘helpful.’ Stripping off leading zeros, changing long numeric strings to 6E43 or some gobbledygook. Found Easy CSV Editor and never looked back. I know Excel has made improvements, but Easy CSV has been friction free for me.
Also +1 for Easy Data Transform for different use cases. Does what I used to use MS Access for in a Windows VM.
In my daily job I find many users requesting “an Excel export” and they are perfectly happy with a CSV export to the point of not even knowing the difference.
Also, I think the example that @webwalrus brings is a perfect case for a vibe coded app.
Adding to BBEDIT I also use vi and /or scripts on the command line to update a CSV file.
If I have a standard fields format for the csv and I just need to append sometimes a command line is much faster.
I have written some shell scripts that can extract particular fields from a log file and append those entries to the csv file. I have automated it as a scheduled job by running this via crontab.
Searching, RegEx and transformation of this data using command line tools is another way I act on csv files.
I use LibreOffice.It works just fine with .CSV files and I use it all the time to work with data which I then convert to SQL insert or update statements. My largest one has 188 columns and 20,386 rows. It’s fast, easy to manipulate and works well.
Fun fact - I didn’t know the category existed either. I just found myself wishing it did, and went to Google to see if anybody else had the same idea. Turns out it’s common enough that there are multiple apps.
It absolutely is. And had I not found an ecosystem of existing apps, or if those apps had a price tag of like $500, I’d be all over vibe coding myself a solution.
So do I. I just like being able to see data and manipulate it in a more traditional view sometimes. The whole reason I’m looking for the CSV GUI is so I can keep my flexibility.
Dev of SmoothCSV here, thanks for the link, @TDK_SA90. Two things that might line up with your programmatic-access angle, @webwalrus: there’s an SQL console for querying CSVs directly, and a CLI so you can open files from scripts or shell aliases. It auto-detects delimiter, encoding, and quote style and keeps them intact on save, so nothing gets silently reformatted.
All features are free; the paid license is just there to support continued development if you find it useful. Easy CSV Editor is genuinely good too, so which one fits really depends on the workflow.
