Tablizer

Convert MediaWiki to TSV Online

Paste a MediaWiki table below, edit it if you need to, and get TSV back. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit and there is no signup.

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Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.
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The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What MediaWiki is

MediaWiki table markup opens with {| and a class, marks headers with an exclamation mark and rows with |-.

Wikipedia editors and anyone running a MediaWiki install.

What TSV is

TSV is CSV with tabs instead of commas. Because tabs almost never appear inside a value, quoting is rarely needed and the files are easier to read by eye.

Bioinformatics, log processing, and anyone who has copied a block of cells out of a spreadsheet: the clipboard format is TSV.

What changes when you convert MediaWiki to TSV

Both cell styles are read: one cell per line, and several on a line separated by exclamation marks or double pipes, which is the form most Wikipedia tables use. Cell attributes before a single pipe are dropped, since style="text-align:right" is presentation rather than data. Wiki links come through as their display text, so [[France|the French Republic]] arrives as the French Republic, and reference markers are removed.

Pick TSV over CSV when your values contain commas. Pasting the result straight into a spreadsheet fills the cells correctly with no import dialog.

What carries over from MediaWiki to TSV

MediaWiki records 4 things about a table that TSV has no way to hold.

MediaWiki can hold a value that is itself a list or an object. TSV has only flat cells, so nested values are flattened into one cell rather than being spread across columns.

A line break inside a cell ends the row in TSV, so line breaks are replaced rather than carried through.

TSV has no separate idea of a header, so the column names become an ordinary first row and nothing in the file marks them as different from the data.

Anything visual in the MediaWiki - weight, alignment, colour, column widths - has no counterpart in TSV and is dropped. The values are what survives.

The result can be read a record at a time, and appended to by adding to the end of it. That is worth having for a table too large to hold in memory, and it means a TSV file that is cut off part way through still gives you every record before the cut.

The identifier 007 comes out of the TSV as 007. Reading it as a number would have made it 7, and an id that changes value is worse than one that stays text.

The role "Analyst, data" survives with its comma, in one cell rather than split across two. That is the first thing to check in any converted table, and the usual place a TSV file goes wrong.

The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are doubled, which is how the delimited formats escape a quote in the TSV.

A worked example

Three rows of staff data, with an identifier that has a leading zero, a value containing a comma, a value containing quotes and one blank cell. Those are the four places formats disagree, so they are the four places to look.

MediaWiki in
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! id !! name !! role !! started !! hours
|-
| 007 || Halima Yusuf || Analyst, data || 2024-03-15 || 38.5
|-
| 012 || Jonah "Jo" Pryce || Engineer || 2025-11-02 ||
|-
| 104 || Wei Chen || Manager || 2023-06-30 || 40
|}
TSV out
id	name	role	started	hours
007	Halima Yusuf	Analyst, data	2024-03-15	38.5
012	"Jonah ""Jo"" Pryce"	Engineer	2025-11-02	
104	Wei Chen	Manager	2023-06-30	40

Questions

How do I convert MediaWiki to TSV?

Paste your MediaWiki into the box above or drop the file onto it. Check the table in the grid, then copy or download the TSV from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

What happens to nested values?

TSV has no nested cell, so a list or object inside a MediaWiki value is flattened into a single cell rather than expanded into extra columns. Split it before converting if the parts need to be separate.

One of my cells has a line break in it - what happens?

A line break would end the row in TSV, so it is replaced instead of carried through. The rest of the cell stays where it belongs.

Is there a limit on file size?

No. The work happens on your own machine, so the limit is your machine's memory rather than an upload cap. A file with tens of thousands of rows converts in a second or two.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The parsing and generating are done by JavaScript running on this page. You can watch the network tab while you convert and see that nothing is sent.

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