Intact CSV Editor
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Intact CSV Editor vs EmEditor

A Windows text editor famous for huge files, with a strong set of CSV tools. There is no Mac version. Intact CSV Editor does 12 things we did not find on EmEditor's CSV tools page — Parquet files, Excel workbooks and SPSS files among them — and 23 of the 24 features EmEditor lists.

Join the betaSee every feature side by side
12

things Intact CSV Editor does that we did not find on EmEditor's CSV tools page, of the 41 we compared.

23 / 24

of the features EmEditor lists are in Intact CSV Editor too, and 1 more in part.

0

of the features EmEditor lists Intact CSV Editor does not have yet.

Where Intact CSV Editor is ahead

12 things we did not find on EmEditor's CSV tools page.

We read its CSV tools page on 6 September 2026, and looked for each of them there.

Opening files

  • Delta Lake and Iceberg tables
  • OpenDocument spreadsheets
  • Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written
  • Python pickles, Feather and MessagePack
  • NetCDF and HDF5 scientific data
  • SQLite databases
  • SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files
  • The value labels of an SPSS or Stata survey kept
  • vCards and your Mac's Contacts
  • Old .xls and binary .xlsb workbooks
  • Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks

Automation

  • AppleScript and Shortcuts
Side by side

Every feature we compared.

FeatureIntact CSV EditorEmEditor
Keeping data intact
Saves a file back byte for byte·
Detects the text encoding
Mainframe EBCDIC code pages·
Keeps the byte-order mark·
Keeps comment lines·
Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold·
Quoting per column and per cell·
A workbook saved back with its other sheets, formats and charts·
Every character set compared side by side before you choose·
Opening files
Separator, quotes and line endings detected and shown
Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks—
OpenDocument spreadsheets—
JSON, JSON Lines, YAML and XML as tables
Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written—
SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files—
SQLite databases—
Old .xls and binary .xlsb workbooks—
Delta Lake and Iceberg tables—
NetCDF and HDF5 scientific data—
Python pickles, Feather and MessagePack—
GeoJSON and TOML·
The value labels of an SPSS or Stata survey kept—
Tables from web pages·
vCards and your Mac's Contacts—
Log files read into columns by a pattern·
Open a file from a link·
Fixed-width files, with layouts you can keep·
Millions of rows
Rules for the files in a folder·
Only part of a huge file opened·
A file followed as it grows, like tail -f·
Quick Open by a few letters of a file's name·
Workspaces: the open files and their filters kept under a name
Editing and cleaning
The column's own values offered as you type·
Fill handle that continues a series
JSON inside a cell, edited as a tree·
Find and replace with regular expressions and a preview
A filter on every column heading, with counts
Sort by several columns, then back to the file's order
Duplicates judged on the columns you choose
Rewrite dates and number formats·
Reshape: wide to long, a cell split into rows
Stack several files into one
Clusters of similar values, merged on request·
One change made in every selected cell, as several cursors would·
Paste from the history of recent copies
The file edited as text, then read back as a table·
Find and replace across every file in a folder·
Matches lit in colours and kept for next time
A column's spelling checked
Analysis
SQL across every open file
Summaries and pivot tables with subtotals
Statistics for every column
Look values up in another table
Compare two files, value by value
Rules for each column, checked on every row·
Charts with trend lines, saved as SVG·
Bars, sparklines and ranks inside the table·
Rules written as, and read from, a JSON Schema·
A web service asked about each row·
Automation
JavaScript macros
Send the table through any program
AppleScript and Shortcuts—
A command-line tool and links into the app·
Files converted from the command line, with no window·
A command palette
Shortcuts you can change, sequences too·
Export
Export to more than 30 formats·
PDF export, PDF/A too
Word and rich text·
Copy as Markdown, JSON, SQL, HTML and more·
HTML tables that sort themselves·
Saved export presets
Split a file into several
Safety
A copy kept before every save·
Unsaved work recovered after a crash
Knows when another program changes the file·
Lock a file against changes
Settings kept in a small file beside the data·
On the Mac
Eight languages
DocumentedIn part—Not in their documentation·Not compared

Choose Intact CSV Editor if…

  • You work on a Mac — EmEditor's CSV tools are for Windows.
  • Your files must come back exactly as they came — byte for byte, in their own separator, quoting, encoding and line endings.
  • You open more than CSV: Excel (old .xls too), JSON, Parquet, Delta Lake, SPSS, Stata, SAS, NetCDF, EBCDIC and more — and export to 38 formats.
  • You want SQL across files, charts, column rules, file comparison and a backup before every save, in one app.
  • You work on a Mac and want an app made for it, in eight languages, from a company in Zürich you can call.

EChoose EmEditor if…

  • A full text editor around its CSV tools.
  • A ruler along the columns, as a text editor has.
Intact CSV EditorEmEditor
What it isNative Mac editor for CSV and 42 other kinds of data fileWindows text editor with CSV tools
Runs onMac (macOS 14 or later)Windows
Only here12 of the 41 features we compared0 of the 24 features it lists
In fairness

Where EmEditor goes further

Every feature EmEditor documents is in Intact CSV Editor. In 1 of them, EmEditor does more:

  • A ruler
Sources

https://www.emeditor.com/text-editor-features/powerful-csv-tools/ — read 6 September 2026: its CSV tools page. Product names belong to their owners. Found something out of date? Tell us.

Everything EmEditor documents — 24 features, and whether Intact CSV Editor does it
EmEditor documentsIn Intact CSV Editor
Up to sixty-four saved CSV formatsYes
Freeze the headerYes
Filter lines by column value, and a negative filter that excludes what matchesYes
Insert lines and columnsYes
Remove embedded newlinesYes
Convert between CSV formatsYes
Combine linesYes
Combine and split columnsYes
Extract columnsYes
Insert sequential numbersYes
Copy a pattern, and Flash FillYes
TransposeYes
A Manage Columns dialogYes
Join CSV tables with a real SQL JOINYes
Delete duplicate lines, with the duplicates bookmarkedYes
Count common strings, extract the frequent onesYes
Pivot tableYes
Unpivot — columns back into rowsYes
Sort by several columnsYes
Open only a named part of a very large fileYes
A rulerPartly
Line numbersYes
Find only inside embedded newlinesYes
AutoFill in cell-selection modeYes
Questions

About this comparison

Is Intact CSV Editor a good alternative to EmEditor?

For most people who work on a Mac, yes. It does 23 of the 24 features EmEditor lists, 1 more in part, and 12 things we did not find on EmEditor's CSV tools page — Parquet files, Excel workbooks and SPSS files among them. Where EmEditor is ahead is listed on this page too.

Does Intact CSV Editor have more features than EmEditor?

Of the 41 features of Intact CSV Editor we looked for on EmEditor's CSV tools page, we found 29, some of them only in part; the other 12 we did not find. The other way round, Intact CSV Editor lacks 0 of the 24 features EmEditor lists. Because we read only that page, 39 general features are left out of the comparison rather than counted as missing.

How was this comparison made?

We read its CSV tools page on 6 September 2026. Every feature EmEditor lists was checked against Intact CSV Editor, and every one of Intact CSV Editor's was looked for in EmEditor's pages. A dash means we found nothing like it there; EmEditor may do more than it documents. If something has changed, write to info@marketvision.ch and we will correct it.

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