Flashcard CSV Converter

This flashcard CSV converter turns a pasted vocabulary list into a properly formatted file for Anki, Quizlet or Excel. It recognizes the formats people actually type, such as word - definition, word: definition, tab-separated columns and plain one-word-per-line lists, then escapes commas, quotes and line breaks so nothing breaks on import.

What the converter does

Each non-empty line becomes one card. In Auto-detect mode the tool looks for a separator in this order: a tab, a spaced dash ( - , en dash or em dash), a colon, an equals sign, and finally a comma or semicolon if it comes after a short term of three words or fewer. Everything before the first separator is the front; everything after it is the back, so definitions that contain more colons or dashes stay intact. Bullets, list numbers and wrapping quotes around a term are removed. A line with no separator becomes a card with an empty back, which is handy if you plan to add definitions later.

How the CSV escaping works

The output follows the standard CSV convention (RFC 4180). A field is wrapped in double quotes when it contains the separator, a double quote, a line break or leading or trailing spaces, and any double quote inside it is doubled: lasting a short time, "fleeting" becomes "lasting a short time, ""fleeting""". Lines end with CRLF, which Anki, Excel and Google Sheets all read correctly. Always quotes every field, which some spreadsheet tools prefer. Never outputs raw text for apps like Quizlet that do not parse quotes; separator characters inside fields are replaced so the columns cannot shift.

Importing into Anki and Quizlet

• Anki: use File, Import, pick the file, and check that the field separator matches. Map column 1 to Front, column 2 to Back and, if you added one, column 3 to Tags. Tags cannot contain spaces, so the tool replaces spaces with underscores. Our guide on how to import words into Anki covers note types and duplicates.
• Quizlet: choose Tab and Never, click Copy output, and paste into Quizlet's import box with "Between term and definition" set to Tab and "Between rows" set to New line.
• Excel: keep the UTF-8 BOM ticked so accented letters display correctly when you double-click the file.

Limitations

Auto-detect guesses per line, so a term that itself contains a spaced dash or colon (such as a phrase with a colon in it) will be split too early. Switch Input format to the separator you used consistently, or use tabs, which never appear in normal text. The tool does not add definitions, check spelling or detect duplicates. Multi-line definitions are not supported in the input; put each card on one line.

Make better cards, not just more

A file of bare word-definition pairs is a starting point. Cards stick better when the back includes an example sentence, a collocation or a cloze deletion from a sentence you actually read; the cloze deletion generator can help with that. If you collect words with Wordie, its dashboard exports your saved words to CSV or JSON, which you can paste here to reshape for other apps. See also why flashcards alone fail.

How to use this tool

1. Paste your word list, one card per line, for example ubiquitous - found everywhere or word: definition.
2. Leave Input format on Auto-detect, or force a specific separator if your definitions contain dashes or colons.
3. Choose the output separator and quoting. For Anki use comma or tab; for Quizlet use tab with quoting set to Never.
4. Check the preview table, then download the .csv or .txt file, or copy the output.
5. Import the file in Anki (File, Import) or Quizlet (Create, Import) and map the columns to Front, Back and Tags.