Convert Plain Text to YAML Online

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

From

From a page

The only part of this site that uses a server. The address is sent to it so the page can be fetched, because a browser is not allowed to fetch someone else's page itself. Your own files are never involved.

Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.

Edit

Paste or upload something above and it will appear here.

ToDataMarkupDocumentsCodeSchemasImages

Header rowDetect numbers

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 YAML is

YAML uses indentation instead of brackets. It is a superset of JSON, supports comments, and is meant to be edited by hand.

Kubernetes manifests, CI pipelines, Ansible playbooks and most modern config files.

What changes when you convert Plain Text to YAML

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 get a list of maps, one per row, with long lines left unwrapped so values do not get folded across lines.

What carries over from Plain Text to YAML

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

YAML 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.

YAML 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 YAML 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 YAML file goes wrong.

The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are left as a plain quote character in the YAML.

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

YAML out

- 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 YAML?

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 YAML from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

Why did my YAML value change meaning?

YAML reads several bare words as booleans. In the 1.1 spec that includes yes, no, on and off, which is why a country column containing NO for Norway can arrive as false. Quote values you want kept as text.

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.