Data Transformation Nightmares | I Hate CSV Blog
3 min readProblem Solver

Data Transformation Nightmares

Convert, reshape, and manipulate CSV data without writing a single line of code.

Stop Fighting With CSV Files

If you're reading this, you're probably frustrated. Good. That means you care about getting work done.

The tools in this section are designed to solve one thing: your CSV problems.

No fluff. No "enterprise features" you'll never use. Just solutions to common, annoying problems.

What You'll Find Here

  • Broken Format Converter - Fix the mess when your CSV export breaks. Convert between broken Excel files (XLS, XLSX), malformed JSON, corrupted CSV, and busted TSV formats because nothing ever works the first time. Handle the encoding disasters and delimiter chaos that plague every data export.
  • CSV to Excel Fix - Stop Excel from destroying your CSV files. Convert broken CSV to XLSX while fixing the encoding disasters, formatting nightmares, and data type failures that make Excel unusable. Because opening CSV in Excel always breaks everything.
  • Extract Data Trapped in PDF - Free your data trapped in PDF hell. Extract tables from locked PDF documents because someone thought PDFs were a good format for data sharing.
  • CSV to Broken JSON - Convert flat CSV rows into JSON when your API demands it but your data is a mess.
  • TSV to CSV Mess - Convert Tab-Separated nightmares to Comma-Separated disasters when systems can't agree on delimiters. Fix broken TSV files that fail to import anywhere because tabs are invisible and break everything.
  • CSV to TSV Nightmare - Convert comma disasters to tab disasters when systems demand the wrong delimiter. Export data to systems that inexplicably require tabs, handle scientific data that breaks with commas, or deal with bioinformatics tools that hate CSV.
  • XLSM to CSV Converter - Convert Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (XLSM) files to CSV format. Extract data from XLSM spreadsheets while preserving data integrity. Perfect for processing macro-enabled Excel files, automating data pipelines, and converting complex workbooks to simple CSV format.
  • CSV to XLSM Converter - Convert CSV files to Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (XLSM) format. Create XLSM files from CSV data for use with VBA macros and automated Excel workflows. Secure, fast, and browser-based conversion without uploading to external servers.
  • Force Convert Data Types - Force broken columns to Numbers, Dates, or Text because type detection always fails.
  • Compress Bloated Files - Compress bloated CSV and XLSX files because they're always too large to email.
  • Calculated Column Disasters - Apply broken math formulas (A + B) to create new columns that might work.
  • VLOOKUP Never Works - Attempt SQL-style joins or VLOOKUP between two incompatible files when keys never match.
  • Join When Nothing Matches - Join broken tables even when spelling never matches because data entry is always inconsistent.
  • Moving Averages - Smooth out volatile data using rolling windows.
  • Extract Emails from Mess - Scrape email addresses from text files or broken CSV columns.
  • Unpivot Wide Disasters - Transform painful wide data (months as columns) into long format because Excel reports are always wrong.
  • Split Broken Dates - Extract Day, Month, Year, and Weekday from broken dates that should have been separate columns.
  • Extract from Broken Text - Count words, characters, and extract patterns from messy text columns.
  • Regex Pattern Nightmare - Use painful Regular Expressions to extract complex patterns because nothing is ever simple.
  • Rename Broken Categories - Rename or group inconsistent values (e.g., US vs USA vs U.S.A.) because data is never standardized.
  • Check Broken Logic Rules - Check if broken data meets specific logical rules (spoiler: it never does).

Why These Tools Exist

Because Excel crashes. Because Google Sheets is slow. Because Python is overkill for simple tasks.

We built these tools out of frustration. Every feature exists because someone (probably you) kept running into the same annoying problem.


Your data stays on your computer. Always free. No nonsense.