FILE FORMATS · DELIMITERS

CSV Commas, Semicolons and Tabs: Prepare Supplier Files for Shopify

A file named .csv is not guaranteed to use a comma as its delimiter. Spreadsheet locales sometimes export semicolon-separated data, while suppliers may provide TSV files. Shopify's product CSV reference requires a comma-separated structure, so a conversion workflow should parse the source delimiter and write the destination format explicitly.

Example: why this problem happens

A supplier file begins Product;SKU;Price, but a naive parser treats the entire line as one header because it expects commas. Adding commas by a global search-and-replace damages descriptions containing punctuation.

Diagnose the issue

Source headerLikely delimiterWhat to do
Title,SKU,PriceCommaInspect quoted commas inside values.
Title;SKU;PriceSemicolonParse as semicolon, export proper comma CSV.
Title[TAB]SKU[TAB]PriceTabParse TSV and map columns explicitly.

Step-by-step: what to do

  1. Open the source file in a plain-text editor and look at the header, not just the file extension.
  2. Check whether commas occur inside quoted product descriptions. The correct delimiter is the separator between fields outside quotes.
  3. If using our supplier converter, upload the original CSV or TSV. It attempts to detect comma, semicolon or tab boundaries and previews the interpreted headers.
  4. Before exporting, confirm that Price remains a single field even if the source locale uses commas for decimals.
  5. Download the output CSV and inspect a few records for correct column counts and escaped quotation marks before importing into Shopify.
Important limitation

Automatic delimiter detection is a convenience, not infallible on ambiguous data. One-column or irregular-row files should be verified manually rather than forced through conversion.

Can our free tools help?

Try with your own file: Shopify product CSV checker, supplier CSV converter, or duplicate SKU finder. The tools are free, local to the browser and do not update your Shopify store.

Common question

Does renaming .tsv to .csv convert the format?

No. Renaming does not change separators or quoting. A real parser must read the source and serialize a correctly delimited output.

Official source and further reading

This explanation is independent and is not an official Shopify specification. Confirm current product import requirements in Shopify Help Center: product CSV formatting requirements before changing a production catalog.

Browse the SellerFile CSV guide library or practice with synthetic CSV sample files.