Guides
Practical answers to the data problems we see most often — why files break, and how to fix them.
Why Your CSV Opens in One Column in Excel (and How to Fix It)
Excel puts the whole CSV row in column A when the file's delimiter doesn't match your regional list separator. Here's why it happens and four reliable fixes.
· 4 min read
How to Keep Leading Zeros (and Long Numbers) When Opening CSV in Excel
Excel turns 00123 into 123, long IDs into 1.23E+15 and some codes into dates. Learn why it happens and how to open CSV files without losing data.
· 4 min read
Fix Garbled Characters (é, è, ????) in CSV Files Opened in Excel
Seeing é instead of é, or question marks instead of Arabic text, in a CSV? It's an encoding mismatch. Learn how UTF-8, the BOM and Windows-1252 cause it.
· 4 min read
How to Flatten Nested JSON into a CSV Table
Nested objects and arrays don't fit in CSV rows. Compare the ways to flatten JSON — dot notation, JSON text cells and exploding arrays — with Python examples.
· 4 min read
JSON Lines (JSONL) Explained: Format, Uses and Common Errors
What JSON Lines is, how it differs from a JSON array, why logs, BigQuery and AI fine-tuning datasets use it, and how to fix the most common JSONL errors.
· 4 min read