🗂️ Obsidian Note Generator

📦 This project is archived — there's a better option now

The CSV importer lives on inside Bases Toolbox, an Obsidian plugin. Its Import CSV as notes panel is a direct descendant of this tool's converter — same column mapping, property types, and date normalization — plus everything a plugin can do that a web page can't:

• Writes notes straight into a folder in your vault — no ZIP, no unzip, no drag-and-drop
• Optionally auto-creates a .base for the imported notes
• Handles quoted fields containing newlines (a known limitation of this tool)
• Runs on mobile and desktop, inside Obsidian

👉 Get Bases Toolbox

This repo stays up as a read-only reference, and the hosted web version keeps working if you want a no-install, browser-only tool. It just won't be updated.

A lightweight, offline-capable browser tool that converts CSV or TSV spreadsheet data into Obsidian-ready .md files with YAML frontmatter — one file per row, downloaded as a ZIP.

No install. No account. No internet required once saved locally. Open the HTML file and go.

🌐 Use it online: grub-basket.github.io/CSV-to-Obsidian-Properties-for-Bases — no download needed. Hat tip to @fork-archive-hub, whose fork was quietly serving this on GitHub Pages before the original repo got around to it.

Need to go the other way? Try the companion tool Bases to CSV — a web app that takes a folder of Markdown files and exports a single .csv you can open back in Excel. Handy as an escape hatch if Obsidian ever breaks, since an Obsidian Base is really just a YAML view/query definition — the actual data lives in each note's frontmatter, not in the Base itself — so there's no built-in way to get a plain spreadsheet back out.

Screenshots

1. CSV Input — paste or drop your file

2. Column Configuration — rename properties, set types, pick the filename column

3. Live Preview — see the exact YAML frontmatter before generating

4. Output — a ZIP of .md files ready to drop into your vault

Features

• Drag-and-drop or paste CSV/TSV directly — no file picker required
• Auto-detects delimiter — comma or tab, whichever your export uses
• Pick which columns to export — untick any column to leave it out of the generated notes; a header checkbox includes/excludes all at once
• Per-column property naming — headers auto-convert to readable Title Case names with spaces (e.g. account-holder-name → Account Holder Name), and you can rename any of them
• Per-column data types — choose from text, number, date, boolean, list, or link, each formatted correctly in YAML
• Smart date normalization — converts MM/DD/YYYY, D-M-YYYY, written month names, and Excel serial numbers to YYYY-MM-DD automatically
• Filename column selector — pick any column as the basis for each .md file's name
• Live preview with row navigation — color-coded YAML frontmatter updates instantly as you configure, and you can step through every row, not just the first
• Omit empty values — optionally leave a property out of a note when its cell is blank
• Sample values in the column table — each column shows an example value from your data to make type choices easy
• Load sample data — one click loads a built-in example CSV to try the tool
• Duplicate filename handling — automatically suffixes conflicting names so nothing gets overwritten
• Quoted-field CSV support — values containing commas are handled correctly
• Fully offline — works without an internet connection once jszip.min.js is saved locally

File Structure

Keep these files in the same folder:

obsidian-note-generator/
├── obsidian-note-generator.html   ← open this in your browser
├── converter.js                   ← the conversion logic
├── theme-switch.js                ← dark/light theme toggle
├── styles-dark.css                ← dark theme
├── styles-light.css               ← light theme
└── jszip.min.js                   ← bundled locally for offline use

To go fully offline, also remove the Google Fonts @import line at the top of both CSS files. The fallback fonts are monospace and sans-serif (Courier New / Arial on Windows, Menlo / Helvetica on Mac).

Usage

1. Open obsidian-note-generator.html in any modern browser.

2. Load your data — either drag your .csv or .tsv file onto the drop zone, or paste the raw CSV text directly.

3. Configure columns — for each column detected from your header row:

• Tick or untick the include checkbox to control whether the column is exported
• Edit the property name (auto-converted to Title Case from your header)
• Set the data type using the dropdown
• Click the ● radio to choose which column names each .md file

4. Check the preview — rows render as live YAML, and the ◀ ▶ buttons step through every row so you can catch issues before generating.

5. Click Download — a obsidian-notes.zip file downloads containing one .md file per row.

6. Unzip into your vault — drop the files into the relevant folder in Obsidian.

Data Types

Date Normalization

When a column is set to date, the tool attempts to parse and reformat to YYYY-MM-DD:

If the value can't be parsed, it's passed through as-is rather than corrupted.

Tips

• Commas in values — export from Excel normally; Excel automatically wraps fields containing commas in quotes, which the parser handles correctly. Alternatively, export as Tab Delimited (.txt) to avoid the issue entirely.
• Account numbers as numbers — set the column type to number so Obsidian treats them as numeric properties. Make sure the values contain no letters or symbols.
• Internal links — use the link type to wrap values in [[...]]. If you need multiple links in one property, use list type and manually format values as [[Note Name]] in your source data.
• Property names — the tool defaults to readable Title Case names with spaces (e.g. Account Holder Name), which display nicely in Obsidian. Note that names with spaces need bracket syntax in Obsidian Bases formulas: note["Account Holder Name"]. If you write a lot of Bases formulas, rename them to lowercase-with-hyphens style instead.

Offline Setup

The repo already ships jszip.min.js locally and the HTML references it with a relative path, so offline use works out of the box: download/clone the folder, open obsidian-note-generator.html, done.

Optionally remove the Google Fonts @import line at the top of styles-dark.css and styles-light.css to drop the last external dependency (fonts fall back to your system's monospace / sans-serif).

Example CSV

See sample-accounts.csv for a ready-to-use test file.

Requirements

• Any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari)
• No server, no backend, no install

Caveats & Disclaimers

• Not all property types are supported by this tool. For more types, review see the Property Types documention on Obisidian's published Help Vault

Companion Tool — Bases to CSV

This tool gets data into Obsidian. Its companion, Bases to CSV, gets it back out:

• Point it at a folder of Markdown files and it generates a single .csv file.
• Useful as a fallback for when you want your data back in Excel — for example if Obsidian breaks or you're migrating away.
• An Obsidian Base file is just a YAML definition of filters, formulas, and views — the actual data lives in each note's frontmatter, not in the Base. So there's otherwise no straightforward built-in way to export everything as one flat spreadsheet. This tool fills that gap.

🔗 bases-to-csv.netlify.app

Credits

• Claude by Anthropic — designed and built entirely through conversation, including the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, date parsing, and this README
• Google Fonts — IBM Plex Mono and IBM Plex Sans, served free for open use
• JSZip by Stuart Knightley — ZIP file generation in the browser, hosted via Cloudflare cdnjs

Built Circa

2026.04.03-04

License

MIT. Bundled JSZip is dual-licensed MIT/GPLv3 and used here under MIT.