What is Text Columns Formatter?

Paste a list with any delimiter and get evenly spaced columns back. Works well for README files, code comments, terminal output, and documentation.

Beyond basic spacing, the formatter detects the most likely delimiter (comma, tab, pipe, semicolon) when you leave it on auto, normalises rows to a common width, and can output plain space-padded columns, a Markdown table, an HTML table with proper thead/tbody, or an ASCII box-drawing table for terminals and wikis. Padding between columns is adjustable, and alignment (left, right, centre) applies per call — handy when one CSV needs numeric right-alignment but the next needs left. You can also drop a .csv or .tsv file straight in instead of pasting.

How to use

1. Paste your text data with values separated by tabs, commas, pipes, or any custom delimiter.
2. Choose the number of columns, alignment (left, right, center), and padding between columns.
3. Copy or download the result. Spacing stays consistent across every column.

When to use

• Turning copied-and-pasted CSV into a readable table inside a README or terminal screenshot.
• Cleaning up irregular spacing in command output before pasting it into documentation.
• Generating a quick Markdown table from spreadsheet rows without launching a converter.

Result

You have a messy CSV list: 'Name,Age,City\nAlice,30,NYC\nBob,25,London'. Set comma as delimiter, left-align, and get an evenly spaced table you can paste straight into docs.

FAQ

Which delimiters does the auto-detect option recognise?

It scans the first few lines for tab, comma, semicolon, and pipe characters and picks the one that appears the most consistently across rows. If your data uses something else, switch the dropdown to Custom and type the actual character.

How does the tool handle rows with different numbers of fields?

Short rows are padded with empty cells so every row ends up the same width as the longest one. Nothing is dropped, and the result aligns cleanly. If a row legitimately has fewer fields, the trailing columns just stay blank.

Does the Markdown output match the GitHub-flavoured spec?

Yes. Pipes wrap each cell, the header divider uses dashes with colons for alignment hints (`:--`, `:-:`, `--:`), and column widths are equalised so the source stays readable. Paste straight into a README and GitHub renders the table without edits.

Why is my right-alignment off when I'm dealing with numbers and currency symbols?

Alignment is by character count, not visual width. Currency symbols, full-width characters, and emoji can take more or fewer columns than their string length suggests. Strip the symbol before formatting or use a monospaced font where every glyph is one cell.

Can it round-trip — read a Markdown table back into CSV?

Not directly. This tool only formats outward. To go the other way, paste the Markdown table, set the delimiter to pipe `|`, and trim the leading and trailing pipes from each row before running it again.

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