SmartQueryTools

Convert TSV to Markdown Table Online

Convert TSV files to a Markdown table directly in your browser. Copy the output and paste it into any Markdown document.

About converting TSV to Markdown

TSV to Markdown is a quick route from a spreadsheet selection or a command-line result to a table in documentation. Copying a range from Excel or Google Sheets puts tab-separated text on the clipboard, and many CLI tools print tab-separated columns. Save that text as a .tsv file and it converts to a pipe table for a README, a GitHub issue, an Obsidian lab notebook or a Jupyter Markdown cell.

Here TSV has an edge over CSV as a source. Prose-heavy columns full of commas need no quoting, so text copied from a sheet converts as it is. Values keep the form they had in the sheet, so a percentage copied as 12.5% stays text and appears exactly like that. Each TSV line becomes a table row, and the header line becomes the table header.

Some characters still need care. Pipes in values are escaped with a backslash, and line breaks become <br>. Markdown formatting characters are not escaped, so a value such as *p* < 0.05 renders with italics rather than asterisks. Wrap such values in backticks after converting if they must appear exactly. The table stops at the first 1,000 rows.

Worked example

A small sample file, converted with the default settings.

Input (TSV)

symbol	chrom	description	tpm	detected
TP53	chr17	tumor protein p53	24.7	true
BRCA1	chr17	BRCA1 DNA repair associated	8.13	true
NT5C	chr17	5', 3'-nucleotidase, cytosolic	3.4	true
SREBF2	chr22	sterol regulatory element binding transcription factor 2		false

Output (Markdown)

| symbol | chrom | description | tpm | detected |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| TP53 | chr17 | tumor protein p53 | 24.7 | true |
| BRCA1 | chr17 | BRCA1 DNA repair associated | 8.13 | true |
| NT5C | chr17 | 5', 3'-nucleotidase, cytosolic | 3.4 | true |
| SREBF2 | chr22 | sterol regulatory element binding transcription factor 2 |  | false |

What changes when you convert TSV to Markdown

  • The TSV header line becomes the Markdown header row, followed by a --- separator for each column.
  • Tabs are replaced by | cell separators, with a pipe at the start and end of each line.
  • NT5C's description keeps its commas and apostrophes as they are. Neither character means anything in a pipe table.
  • SREBF2's missing tpm is an empty cell.
  • A pipe in a value would be written as \|, and a line break inside a value as <br>.

Your file is processed locally in your browser and is never uploaded. The free limit is 50 MB per file; larger files work if your device has the memory for them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I convert cells I copied from Google Sheets?

Yes. Copied cells are tab-separated on the clipboard. Paste them into a plain text editor, save the file with a .tsv extension and drop it here. The first copied row becomes the header, so include the header row in your selection.

Why is part of a cell shown in italics?

Asterisks and underscores are Markdown emphasis markers, and the converter does not escape them. GitHub ignores underscores inside words such as snake_case, but asterisks and leading underscores can still trigger italics. Put the value in backticks to show it literally.

How do I show the table in a Jupyter notebook?

Paste it into a Markdown cell and run the cell; Jupyter renders pipe tables. From a code cell, IPython.display.Markdown(text) renders the same string.

What is Markdown format?

Markdown is a lightweight plain-text format that renders as formatted content. Markdown tables can be embedded directly in README files, wikis, documentation sites, and any tool that supports CommonMark or GitHub Flavoured Markdown.

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