Tablizer

Convert Plain Text to JSON Online

Paste a Plain Text table below, edit it if you need to, and get JSON 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 Plain Text is

Plain text here means columns lined up with spaces, the way a command line tool prints a table.

Terminal output, log files, fixed-width exports from older systems.

What JSON is

JSON is a text format for nested data: objects with named keys, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans and null. It has no date type and no comments.

Every web API, most configuration files and anything that talks to JavaScript.

What changes when you convert Plain Text to JSON

Two shapes are handled. If the same character positions are blank on every line, those gutters are treated as column boundaries, so values containing single spaces stay intact. Otherwise the lines are split on runs of whitespace.

You choose the shape. An array of objects is the default and the one most code expects. A 2D array is smaller. Column arrays suit charting libraries. A keyed object suits lookups by id.

What carries over from Plain Text to JSON

One property of the plain text has no home in JSON, and it is worth knowing which before you convert.

JSON wants a type for each column, and plain text does not record one, so each column is typed from what its values look like. A column of digits that should stay text - a zip code, a phone number, a leading-zero id - is the usual thing to check afterwards.

JSON has no header row. The column names are repeated as keys on every record instead, which is why the result is bigger on disk than the table it came from.

The identifier 007 comes out of the JSON 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 JSON file goes wrong.

The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are escaped with a backslash in the JSON.

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.

Plain Text in
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
JSON out
{
  "staff": [
    {
      "id": "007",
      "name": "Halima Yusuf",
      "role": "Analyst, data",
      "started": "2024-03-15",
      "hours": "38.5"
    },
    {
      "id": "012",
      "name": "Jonah \"Jo\" Pryce",
      "role": "Engineer",
      "started": "2025-11-02",
      "hours": ""
    },
    {
      "id": "104",
      "name": "Wei Chen",
      "role": "Manager",
      "started": "2023-06-30",
      "hours": "40"
    }
  ]
}

Questions

How do I convert Plain Text to JSON?

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

Why did my zip code lose its leading zero?

Type inference turned the text 07030 into the number 7030. Tablizer leaves inference off by default for exactly this reason, and refuses to convert any value starting with a zero followed by a digit even when it is on.

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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