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 7 things we did not find on EmEditor's CSV tools page — Parquet files, Excel workbooks and SPSS files among them — and 21 of the 24 features EmEditor lists.
things Intact CSV Editor does that we did not find on EmEditor's CSV tools page, of the 32 we compared.
of the features EmEditor lists are in Intact CSV Editor too, and 3 more in part.
of the features EmEditor lists Intact CSV Editor does not have yet.
7 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
- OpenDocument spreadsheets
- Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written
- SQLite databases
- SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files
- vCards and your Mac's Contacts
- Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks
Automation
- AppleScript and Shortcuts
Every feature we compared.
| Feature |  Intact CSV Editor | EmEditor |
|---|---|---|
| Keeping data intact | ||
| Saves a file back byte for byte | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Detects the text encoding | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Mainframe EBCDIC code pages | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Keeps the byte-order mark | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Keeps comment lines | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Refuses a character the encoding cannot hold | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Quoting per column and per cell | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Opening files | ||
| Separator, quotes and line endings detected and shown | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Excel workbooks, opened and saved as workbooks | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| OpenDocument spreadsheets | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| JSON, JSON Lines, YAML and XML as tables | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Parquet, Avro, ORC and Arrow, read and written | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| SPSS, Stata, SAS, R and MATLAB files | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| SQLite databases | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Tables from web pages | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| vCards and your Mac's Contacts | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| Log files read into columns by a pattern | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Open a file from a link | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Fixed-width files, with layouts you can keep | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Millions of rows | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rules for the files in a folder | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Editing and cleaning | ||
| The column's own values offered as you type | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Fill handle that continues a series | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| JSON inside a cell, edited as a tree | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Find and replace with regular expressions and a preview | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| A filter on every column heading, with counts | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Sort by several columns, then back to the file's order | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Duplicates judged on the columns you choose | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rewrite dates and number formats | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Reshape: wide to long, a cell split into rows | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Stack several files into one | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Clusters of similar values, merged on request | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Analysis | ||
| SQL across every open file | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Summaries and pivot tables with subtotals | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Statistics for every column | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Look values up in another table | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Compare two files, value by value | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Rules for each column, checked on every row | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Automation | ||
| JavaScript macros | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Send the table through any program | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| AppleScript and Shortcuts | Intact CSV Editor | —Not in their documentation |
| A command-line tool and links into the app | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| A command palette | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Shortcuts you can change, sequences too | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Export | ||
| Export to more than 30 formats | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| PDF export, PDF/A too | Intact CSV Editor | In part |
| Word and rich text | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Copy as Markdown, JSON, SQL, HTML and more | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| HTML tables that sort themselves | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Saved export presets | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Split a file into several | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Safety | ||
| A copy kept before every save | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Unsaved work recovered after a crash | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Knows when another program changes the file | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| Lock a file against changes | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
| Settings kept in a small file beside the data | Intact CSV Editor | ·Not compared |
| On the Mac | ||
| Eight languages | Intact CSV Editor | Documented |
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, JSON, Parquet, SPSS, Stata, SAS, EBCDIC and more — and export to 33 formats.
- You want SQL across files, 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…
- Opens only a named part of a very large file.
- Up to sixty-four saved CSV formats.
- A full text editor around its CSV tools.
| Intact CSV Editor | EmEditor | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Native Mac editor for CSV and 30+ data formats | Windows text editor with CSV tools |
| Runs on | Mac (macOS 14 or later) | Windows |
| Only here | 7 of the 32 features we compared | 0 of the 24 features it lists |
Where EmEditor goes further
Every feature EmEditor documents is in Intact CSV Editor. In 3 of them, EmEditor does more:
- Up to sixty-four saved CSV formats
- Open only a named part of a very large file
- A ruler
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 documents | In Intact CSV Editor |
|---|---|
| Up to sixty-four saved CSV formats | Partly |
| Freeze the header | Yes |
| Filter lines by column value, and a negative filter that excludes what matches | Yes |
| Insert lines and columns | Yes |
| Remove embedded newlines | Yes |
| Convert between CSV formats | Yes |
| Combine lines | Yes |
| Combine and split columns | Yes |
| Extract columns | Yes |
| Insert sequential numbers | Yes |
| Copy a pattern, and Flash Fill | Yes |
| Transpose | Yes |
| A Manage Columns dialog | Yes |
| Join CSV tables with a real SQL JOIN | Yes |
| Delete duplicate lines, with the duplicates bookmarked | Yes |
| Count common strings, extract the frequent ones | Yes |
| Pivot table | Yes |
| Unpivot — columns back into rows | Yes |
| Sort by several columns | Yes |
| Open only a named part of a very large file | Partly |
| A ruler | Partly |
| Line numbers | Yes |
| Find only inside embedded newlines | Yes |
| AutoFill in cell-selection mode | Yes |
About this comparison
Is Intact CSV Editor a good alternative to EmEditor?
For most people who work on a Mac, yes. It does 21 of the 24 features EmEditor lists, 3 more in part, and 7 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 32 features of Intact CSV Editor we looked for on EmEditor's CSV tools page, we found 25, some of them only in part; the other 7 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, 25 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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