Combine CSV files whose headers don't quite match
Two exports of the same data rarely agree on column names. One file says Posting Date, another says posting_date, a third has an extra column nobody asked for. Pasting them together by hand shifts values into the wrong columns. Matching by header name avoids that.
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Open the Merge & clean CSV tool
Steps
- Drop the files with mismatched headers into the tool together.
- Look at the preview header row: columns whose names differ only in case, spaces or punctuation are shown as one column.
- Scroll right to find columns that exist in only some files.
- Rename any columns that mean the same thing but use different words before merging, if you want them combined.
- Download the merged result as CSV or XLSX.
Good to know
What counts as the same header
Upper and lower case, extra spaces and punctuation are ignored when comparing names. So AMOUNT, Amount and amount: all land in one column. Different words, such as Amount and Value, are kept apart.
Columns found in only some files
They are kept rather than dropped. Rows from files without that column simply leave the cell blank.
Column order
The first file sets the starting order, and new columns from later files are added after it.
Questions
Will it guess that Desc and Description are the same?
No. It only ignores case, spacing and punctuation, so it never merges columns based on a guess about meaning.
Can I tell which file a blank came from?
Yes. Turn on Add source file column and each row is tagged with its original file name.
Starting from bank statement PDFs? RowSmith converts text-based PDF statements to CSV or Excel in your browser.
This guide was written with AI assistance and reviewed against the tool's behaviour. Always review your output before using it.