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BibTeX to CSV Converter

Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.

Paste .bib and convert it to CSV, ready to open in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, or a Pandas DataFrame. Fixed 14-column layout (type, citation_key, title, authors, year, journal_or_booktitle, volume, issue, pages, doi, isbn, issn, publisher, url), UTF-8 with BOM so Excel-on-Windows reads accents correctly, quoted fields escape embedded commas and quotes.

How to convert BibTeX to CSV online

Visit the BibTeX to CSV tool page You’re already here. Bookmark thelatexlab.com/bibtex-to-csv/ for next time.
Step 1
Upload or paste your .bib Drop a .bib file using the upload button, or paste the BibTeX text directly. Accent macros (\"a, \'e) decode back to UTF-8 since CSV is plain text. Brace-protected acronyms ({DNA}) lose the braces since CSV has no case-protection mechanism.
Step 2
Confirm CSV is what you want CSV is right for moving entries into a spreadsheet for triage or sorting, or for feeding into a Pandas / R / Julia analysis pipeline. If you need an Excel .xlsx file with formatting preserved, use /bibtex-to-excel/ instead. For programmatic structured access, /bibtex-to-json/ preserves more of the original structure.
Step 3
Convert, then download The full batch downloads as a single .csv file with one header row and one row per entry. The download includes the UTF-8 BOM so Excel-on-Windows reads accents correctly.
Step 4
Parsing and writing both happen in your browser – the .bib content never leaves the tab. Entries that fail to parse show up inline with the reason so you can fix or drop them without losing the rest of the batch.

Where most BibTeX to CSV converters break

No UTF-8 BOM, so Excel mangles accents Excel-on-Windows defaults to its system code page (CP1252 in most installs) when opening a CSV file. UTF-8 content without a BOM is then read as CP1252, which renders “Krämer” as “Krämer” – the classic mojibake symptom. The tool prepends the three-byte UTF-8 BOM so Excel recognises the encoding correctly. macOS and Linux Excel, LibreOffice, Numbers, Google Sheets, and Pandas all handle the BOM transparently.
UTF-8 BOM Excel-safe
Column structure is ad hoc Converters that emit “whichever fields the first entry had” produce a CSV where row 3 has different columns than row 1 – which spreadsheets handle badly. The tool emits a fixed 14-column layout regardless of input completeness: type, citation_key, title, authors, year, journal_or_booktitle, volume, issue, pages, doi, isbn, issn, publisher, url. Missing fields are empty rather than absent.
14 columns fixed schema
Embedded commas and quotes break parsing CSV’s field-separator is the comma, which means a value containing a comma (a journal title like “Cell, Tissue and Organ Research”) needs to be quoted, and a value containing a quote (“Smith said \”hello\””) needs the inner quote doubled. Naive converters emit unquoted commas, splitting one cell into many across the spreadsheet. The tool applies proper RFC 4180 quoting.
RFC 4180 proper quoting
Multi-author lists collapse silently CSV is flat – one row per entry – so multi-author entries (the common case) need to collapse into one cell. Converters that join authors with a plain comma produce ambiguity (“Smith, John, Doe, Jane” – is that two people or one with an unusual name?). The tool joins authors with ” and ” – the same convention BibTeX itself uses – so the field stays parseable downstream.
“X and Y” unambiguous separator
If your downstream tool needs more structure than flat CSV can carry (nested authors, multiple ISBNs per record, full abstract preservation), /bibtex-to-json/ is closer to lossless. For native .xlsx with cell formatting, use /bibtex-to-excel/.

Frequently asked questions

That’s the UTF-8 BOM – three bytes (EF BB BF) at the start of the file that tell Excel-on-Windows the file is UTF-8 encoded. Without it, Excel-on-Windows reads CP1252 and turns “Krämer” into “Krämer”. Most text editors hide the BOM transparently; some (vim with default settings, hex viewers) show it as or similar. Pandas, R, Julia, jq, and most modern tools handle it transparently.

Most citation managers don’t accept generic CSV directly – they expect RIS or BibTeX. If your goal is to move entries between citation managers, use /bibtex-to-ris/ instead. CSV is for spreadsheet triage, scripted analysis, or merging with non-bibliographic data (review status, screening decisions, ratings).

Yes. CSV is plain UTF-8 text, so diacritics like Krämer and École come through correctly. Brace-protected acronyms ({DNA}) lose the braces because CSV has no case-protection mechanism.

Three common culprits: (1) the file is actually RIS, EndNote, or NBIB; (2) a missing closing brace – one bad entry blocks the parser at that point; (3) @string macros without definitions. Each failing entry shows up inline with the reason.

Free, no signup. Parsing and writing both run entirely in your browser – the .bib file or pasted text never touches our server, no network call is made. The output exists in your browser session and disappears when you close the tab.

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