Getting started
Open your first file and see what BigXL does differently from a spreadsheet.
Keys on your platform
This guide writes shortcuts in the macOS form. On Windows and Linux, use Ctrl wherever it says Cmd, and Alt wherever it says Option. So Cmd+K is Ctrl+K, and Option+Cmd+T is Alt+Ctrl+T.
BigXL shows the right keys for the machine you are on, so the menus and the command palette always display Ctrl on Windows and Linux. The full list is in Keyboard shortcuts.
Opening a file
To open a file, go to File > Open or press Cmd+O. BigXL supports CSV, TSV and other delimited text (.txt, .psv, .dat), Excel (.xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb, .xls), OpenDocument (.ods), Parquet, and JSON (.json, and .ndjson or .jsonl with one record per line). You can also open compressed .gz and .zst files directly, without unpacking them first. If a file is empty, is not a data file, or has broken JSON, BigXL says so in plain words instead of showing a blank grid.
There is no file size limit and no import wizard to slow you down. A 10 GB file opens exactly the same way as a 10 KB file. The first rows appear immediately on your screen. The rest of the file is read in the background while you start working.
Excel workbooks with multiple sheets
When you open an Excel workbook that contains multiple sheets, BigXL asks which sheet you want, and opens that one in a tab. To work with a second sheet, open the workbook again and pick the other sheet. It arrives in its own tab, so you can compare or join the two.
Multi-tab
You can open several files at once. Each file gets its own tab at the top of the window. These tabs are completely independent of each other. You can drag tabs around to reorder them to your liking.
Right-click any tab to close it. You can also right-click to close all other tabs or close tabs to the right.
When two open files have the same name, which happens often when you open a source file and its cleaned output, each tab shows the folder it came from beside the file name. Tabs whose names do not clash stay plain. Hovering any tab shows its location.
If a file changes on disk after you opened it, including when BigXL itself replaces it during a folder run, the tab is marked with an amber dot and the status bar reads ‘This file is stale’. The tab still shows the version you opened, which is safe to keep working in, but it is no longer what is on disk. Close the tab and open the file again to pick up the current contents.
Three things that work differently
BigXL looks like a spreadsheet but behaves differently in three important ways.
- Original files are untouched: Your original file is never changed unless you ask. Everything happens in a safe working copy. This prevents accidental data loss. To get your changes out, export your work to a new file. If you choose File > Save on a CSV or TSV, BigXL asks first and keeps a copy of the original beside it, named like
orders (original).csv. - Privacy by design: Nothing leaves your machine. There are no servers and no telemetry data sent back to us. Bix, the AI assistant, runs entirely on your own local hardware. You can unplug your network cable and everything still works perfectly.
- Every step is undoable: Every action you take is completely undoable. The Timeline records exactly what you did in plain English words. You can click any step to instantly jump back to it.
What you see on screen
The BigXL interface has several distinct parts.
- The toolbar: The toolbar at the top holds the actions you reach for most often: Open, Filter, Bix, Chart, Pivot, Join, SQL, Redact, Timeline, Notes and Export CSV. You can show or hide individual buttons by going to Settings > Toolbar, or hide the whole toolbar with View > Toolbar. This keeps your workspace uncluttered.
- The notice strip: Below the toolbar, BigXL tells you when it has found values that need fixing, with a See them and fix button. See Spotting and fixing problem values.
- The formula bar: The formula bar sits right below the toolbar. It shows the true value of the cell you are currently on. You can click inside it to edit the cell value inline.
- The grid: The grid is where your data lives. It looks and feels just like a traditional spreadsheet. However, it renders millions of rows smoothly because it only draws the rows currently visible on your screen.
- The status bar: The status bar at the bottom shows the file name, total row count, column count, and your current selection. When you select a range of numbers, it displays the count, sum, and average. If you select a whole column, it calculates these statistics across the entire file, not just the visible rows.
- The Timeline panel: The Timeline panel on the right lists every step you have taken since opening the file. Click any step in this list to jump back to that exact state in time.
- Chips: Active filters and colours appear as small chips above the grid. Click one to take that single filter or colour off.
If you get stuck
If you cannot find a feature, press Cmd+K to open the command palette. Type what you want in plain words, like ‘remove duplicates’ or ‘export’. The palette finds the exact command for you, no matter where it lives in the menus.
Loading large files
When a massive file is loading, BigXL shows a progress bar with a percentage and an estimated time remaining. You do not have to wait to start working. You can scroll and inspect the rows that are already loaded while the rest of the file finishes in the background. A stop button next to the progress bar lets you cancel the loading process if you realize you opened the wrong file.
Recovering broken CSVs
Sometimes CSV files have bad delimiters, unclosed quotes, or other formatting problems. BigXL does not crash or skip the whole file when it hits an error. It loads all the valid rows normally.
It then puts the broken lines into a Skipped Lines panel. You can inspect the errors there. You can fix the bad delimiters and re-import the corrected lines into your main grid.
Free, Pro, and Enterprise
BigXL comes in three tiers.
- Free: BigXL is free to use forever for any file size. It includes opening, scrolling, sorting, filtering, finding and searching every open file, colouring cells and rows, column quality bars, pivots and charts, cell edits, drag-fill, reordering columns and rows, computed columns, CSV and TSV export, and saving a sample of the rows.
- Pro: Pro adds the tools that change values, such as trimming, re-casing, find and replace, splitting, removing duplicates (exact and near repeats), date standardising and converting a column to numbers. It also includes the AI assistant, a SQL console, joins and file comparison, sessions, recipes, splitting a file into one file per value, and export options for Excel, Parquet, and JSON.
- Enterprise: Enterprise is designed for big teams. It adds PII redaction, the saved privacy scan, batch folder processing, combining a folder into one file, and Bates numbering. New compliance certificates require active Enterprise assurance; certificates already saved remain available.
Features that are locked for your current tier do not appear in menus or toolbars at all. You never have to look at greyed-out buttons or upgrade nags while you work.