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Tab-delimited text, also known as tab-separated values (TSV), is a format that can be created or viewed by most spreadsheet programs and text editors. The TSV format follows these rules:

• Each entry in the file takes up a single line.
• The first line in the file is the header line, which labels each field.
• A field contains data, such as a number or text.
• Fields are separated by tabs.
• Each line contains the same number of fields.

The following example shows the contents of a simple tab-delimited text file:

The bold line is the header line, which determines the order of the information on subsequent lines. The first field in each line should always correspond to the first header (e.g., "Title" corresponds to Pride and Prejudice). The other headers and fields should match similarly.

It's important to note that tab characters aren't usually visible except as white space. Also, because fields are different lengths, a tab-delimited text file in a text editor will probably look more like this:

Without columns or tabs, it's difficult to see which text corresponds to which header. It's much easier to visualize in columns:

 
Spreadsheet programs help to create clear tab-delimited text files where each line of information takes up a row, and each field occupies a column:

 
Both Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets are applications that allow you to convert spreadsheets into tab-delimited text files.