How Excel Columns works
Excel Columns reshapes a newline-separated list into rows of N cells separated by tabs, with CRLF row breaks. The output is exactly what Excel expects on the clipboard: cells separated by \t land in separate columns, rows separated by \r\n land on separate lines. Empty lines become empty cells by default so your row count stays predictable; toggle "Skip empty lines" to drop them.
How to use
Paste your list on the left. Set "Cells per row" to the column count you want (1 = single column, 2 = two columns, etc.). Toggle "Skip empty lines" if your input has blank rows. Copy the result and paste it directly into Excel — each tab lands in the next column, each row break starts a new Excel row.
Frequently asked questions
How does Excel know where one cell ends and the next begins?
Excel interprets tab characters as column breaks and CRLF as row breaks. The tool emits exactly that — cells joined with \t, rows joined with \r\n — so a plain copy-paste from the output lands each value in its own cell.
Why does the final row sometimes have fewer cells?
When the total item count is not a multiple of your column count, the last row has fewer cells and Excel simply leaves the trailing columns blank for that row. The tool does not pad with empty tabs.
What happens to blank lines in my input?
By default a blank line becomes an empty cell, so it counts toward your column count and shows up as a gap when pasted into Excel. Toggle "Skip empty lines" to remove blank lines before packing — useful for cleaning up lists that were copy-pasted with stray newlines.
Does this work with Google Sheets and Apple Numbers?
Yes. Tab-separated rows with CRLF line breaks paste cleanly into Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, and LibreOffice Calc as well as Excel. The tab/CRLF combination is the de-facto cross-spreadsheet clipboard format.
Will this mess up values that contain tabs or newlines?
A literal tab or newline inside a value will be misread as a cell boundary. For most plain lists (names, ids, labels) this is not an issue, but if your values can contain tabs or line breaks you should sanitize them first or use a CSV-specific workflow.
Is there a limit on how many columns I can produce?
The input box accepts any value from 1 to 20 by default. Excel itself handles up to 16,384 columns per sheet, so you are far below any practical limit. For very wide outputs, paste row-by-row instead of all at once.