How to use the Comma Separated to List
Split delimited values into a list in three steps:
1
Paste your delimited string
Paste comma-separated, semicolon-separated, pipe-separated, or any delimited values into the input area.
2
Set delimiter and options
Select the delimiter that matches your input (comma, semicolon, pipe, tab, space, or custom). Toggle trim whitespace, remove empty items, and strip surrounding quotes as needed.
3
Copy the list
Click 'Split to List' and copy or download the one-item-per-line output.
When to use this tool
Use to split delimited strings back into individual list items:
- →Splitting a comma-separated list from a spreadsheet cell into individual lines for editing or further processing
- →Converting a SQL IN clause value list (1, 2, 3, 4) into individual lines for review or batch operations
- →Breaking up a comma-separated configuration value into individual entries for easier editing
- →Converting an API response parameter string (tag1,tag2,tag3) into individual values for line-by-line review
- →Splitting a pipe-separated or semicolon-separated export file field into individual items
- →Unpacking a joined list back into individual lines to feed into another text tool or list processor
Frequently asked questions
Q:Are quoted CSV values handled correctly?
Yes — for comma-delimited input, the tool applies basic quoted CSV parsing. A value like "item with, comma" is treated as a single item including the embedded comma, because the outer double quotes mark it as a single field. This handles the most common quoted CSV patterns found in spreadsheet exports and data interchange files.
Q:What delimiters does the tool support?
Six delimiter options are available: Comma (,), Semicolon (;), Pipe (|), Tab, Space, and Custom (any string you type). Space splitting is useful for splitting space-separated tokens. Custom delimiter accepts multi-character strings, so you can split on sequences like ' | ' or ' — ' as well as single characters.
Q:What does 'Strip surrounding quotes' do?
When enabled, leading and trailing quote characters (double quotes, single quotes, or backticks) are stripped from each item after splitting. This is useful when your delimited values are already quoted — for example 'apple','banana','cherry' — and you want the clean item text without the wrapping quotes in the output list.
Q:What does 'Remove empty items' do?
When enabled (the default), items that are empty strings after splitting (and after trimming, if trim is also enabled) are excluded from the output. This prevents blank lines appearing in the list from trailing delimiters or consecutive delimiters in the input, such as 'a,,b,c' producing 'a', '', 'b', 'c' without this option.
Q:How is this different from the List to Comma Separated tool?
Comma Separated to List is the reverse operation: it takes a single delimited string and splits it into multiple lines (one item per line). List to Comma Separated does the opposite — it takes a multi-line list and joins it into a single delimited string. Use this tool to unpack a delimited value; use List to Comma Separated to pack a list into a delimited string.
Q:Can I split a list that uses a multi-character delimiter?
Yes — select the Custom delimiter option and type any multi-character string as the separator. For example, to split a list that uses ' | ' (space-pipe-space) as its delimiter, type ' | ' in the custom field. The tool splits on the exact string you enter, so multi-character sequences work as expected.