Tablizer

Convert TSV to PDF Online

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

From

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.
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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 PDF is

PDF describes a page: glyphs at coordinates, not rows and columns. A table in a PDF is a visual arrangement, not a data structure.

Reports, invoices, statements and anything sent to be read rather than processed.

What changes when you convert TSV to PDF

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

The table is drawn into a paginated document with the header repeated on every page, so a long table stays readable past page one. Page size, orientation and font size are all adjustable.

What carries over from TSV to PDF

TSV records 3 things about a table that PDF has no way to hold.

Nothing in PDF records that the first row is a header. It is drawn at the top and looks like one, which is all that is left of the distinction.

TSV can be read one record at a time. PDF 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.

PDF is the end of the line for this data. Reading the table back out of it is a separate and much harder problem than writing it, so keep the TSV if you will need the values again.

Questions

How do I convert TSV to PDF?

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

Can I get my table back out of the PDF?

Out of one made here, yes, because the text is real text. Out of a scanned document, no. A scan is an image of a page, and pulling data from it needs optical character recognition, which is a different job with a different failure rate.

Can I convert the PDF back to TSV afterwards?

Not mechanically. PDF keeps how the table looks, not what it held, so going back means reading the values off the page again. Keep the TSV if you will need it.

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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