Why field counts become inconsistent
A trailing delimiter can create an extra field. A missing delimiter can produce a short row. An unquoted comma or line break inside a value can split one field into several records. Simply splitting each physical line on commas is unsafe because valid quoted fields may contain commas and newlines.
Safe repair steps
- Keep the original file unchanged.
- Detect the delimiter using several quote-aware records.
- Compare each logical record width with the header width.
- Review every row that is short or long before changing it.
- Pad missing trailing fields only when blank values are valid; inspect extra fields rather than silently discarding them.
What the free tool changes
The diagnostic reports the number of uneven rows without uploading the file. Repair pads short rows, normalizes headers and output encoding, and writes an audit report. Rows wider than the header are constrained to the declared width, so review the report and keep the source copy.