Convert TSV to DAX Online

Paste a TSV table below, edit it if you need to, and get DAX 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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The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

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 DAX is

A DAX DATATABLE expression that defines a table inline in a Power BI model.

Power BI report authors.

What changes when you convert TSV to DAX

The tab is unambiguous, so there is no delimiter to guess. This is the most reliable of the delimited formats to read.

All columns are declared as STRING. Change the type declarations by hand if you need numeric columns.

What carries over from TSV to DAX

TSV records 2 things about a table that DAX has no way to hold.

DAX wants a type for each column, and TSV 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.

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

DAX marks its header cells differently from its data cells, so the first row is written with that marker.

TSV can be read one record at a time. DAX has to be complete before it means anything, so the whole table is held in memory while it is written and a file that gets cut off part way through is not partly usable - it is unusable.

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

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

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.

TSV 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
DAX out
staff =
DATATABLE(
    "id", STRING,
    "name", STRING,
    "role", STRING,
    "started", STRING,
    "hours", STRING
    {
    {"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 TSV to DAX?

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

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

A line break would end the row in DAX, 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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