Privacy: your files never leave your device
SheetTidy cleans and converts spreadsheets entirely inside your web browser. This page explains what that means in practice, the very little information involved in running the site, and how you can check it for yourself.
Last updated:
The short version
- Your files are opened, changed and saved on your own device. They are never uploaded.
- There are no accounts and no advertising.
- We use Google Analytics to count visits and see which tools are used. It never receives your files, their names or anything inside them.
How client-side processing works
When you open a SheetTidy tool, your browser downloads the page and the program that does the work, just as it downloads any website. When you choose a file, the browser reads it from your disk and hands it to that program, which runs in a separate background process of the page (aWeb Worker). The worker reads the spreadsheet, applies the clean-up you chose and builds the new file. When you press download, the browser saves that file straight to your device.
At no point does the file, or anything from inside it, travel over the internet. There is no server that could receive it: SheetTidy is a set of static pages with no back end, database or upload endpoint.
The site also tells your browser what it may connect to. Its Content Security Policy allows only the site itself and Google Analytics (described below), and nothing about your files is ever passed to Google Analytics, so even a mistake elsewhere in the code could not quietly post your data to another website.
When you close the tab or press Start over, the file is gone from memory. Nothing is kept between visits or between pages, which is also why you add your file again when a tool sends you to another tool.
What information is involved
Stored in your browser
If you pick a light or dark theme, that choice is saved in your browser's local storage so the site looks the same next time. It never leaves your device, and clearing your browser data removes it. Google Analytics also stores its cookies (see below).
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how many people visit and which tools are useful. It loads after the page has finished loading and records:
- the pages you view, how you arrived (for example from a search engine) and your browser, device type, language and approximate location (country or city, from your IP address);
- three events of our own: that a tool was run (which tool, and the file size only as a rough range such as "1,000–10,000 rows"), that a result was downloaded, and that a sample file was used.
It never receives your files, their names, column names, cell values or the exact size of your data: the code that reports events cannot express them, and downloads are created without the page-wide links that Google Analytics watches. Google signals and advertising features are turned off. Google Analytics sets cookies (_ga and _ga_*) on this site to tell visits apart; Google processes the data as described inHow Google uses information from sites that use its services.
To opt out, block cookies for this site in your browser, use a content blocker, or install Google'sGoogle Analytics opt-out browser add-on. SheetTidy works exactly the same without it.
Sample files
The Try a sample file buttons download a small example spreadsheet from this website. They do not send anything about you or your own files.
Hosting
Like every website, SheetTidy is delivered by a hosting provider. To send you the pages and protect the service from abuse, the provider's servers handle standard technical details of each request, such as your IP address, the page requested and your browser type, under the provider's own privacy policy. These requests contain no file data, because files are never sent.
Emails you send us
If you email hello@sheetidy.com, we use your address and message only to reply. Please do not attach spreadsheets that contain personal or confidential data; a short description of the problem, or a sample with made-up values, is enough.
What we never do
- Upload, store, read or share your files or their contents.
- Send anything about your files to Google Analytics or anyone else.
- Use advertising networks, advertising cookies or fingerprinting.
- Sell personal information.
Check it yourself
- Open a tool page and your browser's developer tools (F12), then the Network tab.
- Choose a file, run the tool and download the result.
- Look at the requests: you will see the page loading its own code from this site, Google Analytics recording the page view and the anonymous events above, and the download created locally, but no request carrying your file, its name or its contents.
Our automated tests run the same check on every tool flow before each release.
Children
SheetTidy collects no personal information, so it does not knowingly collect information from anyone, including children.
Changes
If anything here changes, this page will say so and the date above will change. Questions are welcome on the contact page.