Guides & articles
Clear, practical explainers about CSV, delimiters, cleaning messy data and joining tables.
What Is a CSV File? A Plain-Language Introduction
CSV is the lingua franca of tabular data — exported by every database, spreadsheet and analytics tool. Here is what it is, how it is structured, and the rules that keep it readable.
CSV Pitfalls: Delimiters, Quoting and Encoding
CSV looks trivial until a file opens as a single column or turns Cyrillic into garbage. Here are the three things that break CSV most often — and how to fix each.
CSV vs JSON vs Excel: Which Format When?
CSV, JSON and Excel all store data, but they are good at different jobs. A short, practical comparison to help you pick the right one — and convert between them cleanly.
Cleaning Messy Spreadsheet Data
Real exports arrive full of stray spaces, duplicate rows and empty columns. A practical routine for turning a messy CSV into clean, analysis-ready data.
Merging and Joining Tables Without a Database
Two spreadsheets, one shared ID, and a question: how do you combine them? An intuition-first guide to inner, left and full-outer joins — the SQL joins, minus the SQL.
CSV for Data Analysis: From Raw File to Insight
CSV is where most analysis begins. How to get a file into clean, tidy shape — and how comparing two versions turns a pile of rows into an answer.