CSV files are the simplest form of data files that can be created, modified or opened using all the popular Office software such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and LibreOffice. CSV files basically contain data values separated by commas. Each line in a CSV file contains a data set separated by commas. This is why we can open CSV files using even basic plain-text editors such as Windows Notepad or Notepad++ – albeit it is much easier to read the data using Microsoft Office or LibreOffice.
So what a person has to do to read CSV data files if they do not have a huge Office software installed on their computer? Well, there is a small, fast and portable CSV file reader called CSVFileView. Designed by the famous developer Nir Sofer, it is an efficient and minimalist CSV data file reading application for Windows.
We can open any CSV file inside CSVFileView irrespective of their file sizes and it opens them in fraction of a second. Not only it can open comma separated CSV files, but it also supports tab delimited data files. It displays all the columns of the CSV file and we can automatically size them based on the data being shown.
It offers some advanced controls for searching and displaying the data. We can add filters for limiting the values between certain range just as you would do in the case of SQL database. In addition, it comes with a quick filter which can be used to search for a string in one or all columns. If it finds that string, then we can choose to display or hide those datasets.
The way the data is displayed from a CSV file is also customizable. We can choose whether numeric data uses digits separator or they should be aligned to the right. We can also change the font used to display the CSV file data in CSVFileView.
You can download CSVFileView from https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/csv_file_view.html.