List Management

What is a CSV file

What is a CSV file

A comma-separated values (CSV) file is used for the digital storage of data structured in a table of lists form, where each associated item (member) in a group is in association with others also separated by the commas of its set. Each line in the CSV file corresponds to a row in the table. Within a line, fields are separated by commas, each field belonging to one table column. Since it is a common and simple file format, CSV files are often used for moving tabular data between two different computer programs, for example between a database program and a spreadsheet program.

If you have an excel spreadsheet with the following columns

First Name	Last Name	Email Address
James	Brown	James@brown.com
Sally	Taylor	sally.taylor@gmail.com

When this excel file is saved as a CSV file, if you view it (using Notepad or Text Edit) then the data will look something link this

"James","Brown","James@brown.com"
"Sally","Taylor","sally.taylor@gmail.com"