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At my work place I have to many times work with large CSV files. The problem is that Microsoft Excel 2003 cannot handle a file that contains data more than 65,536 rows in a column and most of the time I end up working with CSV file that has got data more than 65,536 rows.

In these cases, I open the CSV file in notepad and copy the data less than 65,536 rows and paste into another file and this way I used to split up the CSV file. The problem with this method is takes some time get this done and doing this when the number of rows are greater than 500,000 becomes a real pain.

On Googling around I found that there is free tool called CSV Splitter, that can do this quickly with out me having to do all the work.

The CSV Splitter can split the files based on two parameters,  first is based on the number of lines specified and second is based on number of files that you intend to split of the original CSV file. I prefer to use the number of lines feature so that I can split the CSV file with less than 65,536 lines of data so that it can be opened in Microsoft Excel 2003 for further processing.

To split CSV file just point the location of the CSV file and enter the parameter that you intend to use for splitting up the file and hit the “Split Now” button, the tool will split the CSV files into multiple CSV files.

Another feature worth to note here is that this utility does not touch the original file rather it creates new set of CSV files based on the selections that was made. Also there is no need to install this as it can be run directly so makes lot of sense to carry it portable drive if you are working with CSV files frequently.

We tested this software in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Download CSV Splitter (Direct Download) Home Page

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