# Column Headers showing up staggered

**URL:** <https://forum.openrefine.org/t/column-headers-showing-up-staggered/2776>\
**Category:** Support and Helpdesk\
**Created:** [April 9, 2026, 7:58pm UTC](https://forum.openrefine.org/t/column-headers-showing-up-staggered/2776 "2026-04-09T19:58:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![crummettmit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@crummettmit](https://forum.openrefine.org/u/crummettmit)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2026, 7:58pm UTC](https://forum.openrefine.org/t/column-headers-showing-up-staggered/2776/1 "2026-04-09T19:58:37Z")

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Hi, I am trying to combine many csv files together using OpenRefine. I have all the csv files formatting uniformly but the month columns are not behaving as such. I have the parsing parameters set to columns separated by commas, Use character to enclose cells containing column separators, and to ignore the first 14 lines and parse next 1 line as header. I load them in but all the months are not lining up. I double checked the files and the column headers are all the same. Any help? I have a sample of files available here [ccforopenrefindhelpdesk - Google Drive](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jeSdBZi3UhyfWb_X2O3TVhHdQ4BqTAYS?usp=sharing)

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**Author:** ![crummettmit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@crummettmit](https://forum.openrefine.org/u/crummettmit)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2026, 8:09pm UTC](https://forum.openrefine.org/t/column-headers-showing-up-staggered/2776/2 "2026-04-09T20:09:37Z")

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I see it’s the formatting on the date column header on the individual cvs files. I will update each file and reload into OpenRefine. If there’s an easier way than editing each cvs, please let me know.

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**Author:** ![b2m](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.openrefine.org/b2m/32/139_2.png) [@b2m](https://forum.openrefine.org/u/b2m)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 5:58am UTC](https://forum.openrefine.org/t/column-headers-showing-up-staggered/2776/3 "2026-04-10T05:58:25Z")

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In OpenRefine you can also use [column joining](https://openrefine.org/docs/manual/columnediting#join-columns) to combine the unaligned date columns into one.

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**Author:** ![crummettmit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@crummettmit](https://forum.openrefine.org/u/crummettmit)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2026, 2:57pm UTC](https://forum.openrefine.org/t/column-headers-showing-up-staggered/2776/4 "2026-04-10T14:57:51Z")

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Thank you so much. I did find this eventually, after I redid some headers. Thank you for taking the time to reply. I am new to OpenRefine!