Why did Excel use semicolons in the first place?

Because the computer that saved it writes decimals with a comma. A comma cannot be both the decimal mark and the separator between fields, so those Excel versions switch the separator to a semicolon. It is a regional setting, not a fault in the file.

Will converting change 1.234,56 into the wrong number?

Not here. The fixer converts decimal commas to dots and drops the thousands marks in one step, and only in columns where nearly every value is a number. 1.234,56 becomes 1234.56, which every tool reads as the same amount.

What about the accented letters — will they survive?

Yes. Older Excel exports are often encoded as Windows-1252 rather than UTF-8, which is why umlauts and accents turn into odd symbols elsewhere. The fixer detects the encoding, says which one it found, and writes clean UTF-8.

Can I just find and replace the semicolons with commas?

Only if no field contains a comma and no number uses a decimal comma — otherwise the replacement invents extra columns or breaks the amounts. A proper conversion quotes fields that need it and handles the numbers separately.

Does this work for files with tabs or pipes instead?

Yes. The fixer reads comma, semicolon, tab and pipe separated files and lets you choose the separator to read with if the guess is wrong; other separators are declined by name rather than half-read.

Is my file uploaded anywhere?

No. The semicolons and the decimal commas are rewritten inside this page, from the bytes on your machine. Switch your network off before you drop the file and the fix still works, because none of it needs a server.

All guides

My CSV opened as one column — Excel used semicolons

Excel in countries that write decimals with a comma — Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and most of Europe — saves CSV with semicolons between the fields, because a comma already means something inside a number. Open that file on a computer set to English and every row lands in one cell. Nothing is corrupt; the two sides simply disagree about the separator.

How to tell which file you have

Open the file in a plain text editor, or look at the first line in the health check. Semicolons between the headings, and numbers like 1.234,56 with a comma before the decimals, mean a decimal-comma export. Commas between the headings and 1,234.56 mean the file is already in the form English-language tools expect.

The sample file on this page is a German export: five orders with semicolons as separators and amounts written the German way, so you can see the shape before you drop your own.

Fix it without retyping the numbers

Changing the separator is the easy half. The half that goes wrong is the numbers: 1.234,56 read by an English tool becomes 1.23456, or 1234.56 with a lost thousands mark, or refuses to be a number at all. The delimiter fixer below rewrites the separator and the decimal commas together, and it only converts a column when nearly every value in it reads as a number — so a comma inside a note is never touched.

Every value is carried through as text: leading zeros, reference numbers and dates come out exactly as they went in, and nothing is retyped as a number along the way. The file itself is written fresh — clean UTF-8, standard quoting, one line ending throughout — because that is what a file that opens everywhere looks like. If you need the original bytes untouched apart from an edit, that is the editor, not this page.

If the file has to stay semicolon-separated

Excel can open a semicolon file correctly on any locale through Data, then From Text/CSV, where the separator is a setting. The file itself does not need to change for that route — it needs the person opening it to pick the separator, every time.

For a file that other people or other systems will open, converting once to commas and dot decimals is the version that works everywhere without instructions.

The sample file

Auftrag;Kunde;Betrag;Status
S-1001;Müller;1.234,56;bezahlt
S-1002;Bär;89,50;bezahlt
S-1003;Schulz;32,10;erstattet
S-1004;König;410,00;bezahlt
S-1005;Vogel;55,25;offen

Obviously made-up data, small enough to read. Download it and drop it on the tool to see the fix before trying your own file.

Questions

Why did Excel use semicolons in the first place?: Because the computer that saved it writes decimals with a comma. A comma cannot be both the decimal mark and the separator between fields, so those Excel versions switch the separator to a semicolon. It is a regional setting, not a fault in the file.
Will converting change 1.234,56 into the wrong number?: Not here. The fixer converts decimal commas to dots and drops the thousands marks in one step, and only in columns where nearly every value is a number. 1.234,56 becomes 1234.56, which every tool reads as the same amount.
What about the accented letters — will they survive?: Yes. Older Excel exports are often encoded as Windows-1252 rather than UTF-8, which is why umlauts and accents turn into odd symbols elsewhere. The fixer detects the encoding, says which one it found, and writes clean UTF-8.
Can I just find and replace the semicolons with commas?: Only if no field contains a comma and no number uses a decimal comma — otherwise the replacement invents extra columns or breaks the amounts. A proper conversion quotes fields that need it and handles the numbers separately.
Does this work for files with tabs or pipes instead?: Yes. The fixer reads comma, semicolon, tab and pipe separated files and lets you choose the separator to read with if the guess is wrong; other separators are declined by name rather than half-read.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?: No. The semicolons and the decimal commas are rewritten inside this page, from the bytes on your machine. Switch your network off before you drop the file and the fix still works, because none of it needs a server.