CSV is one of the most versatile data formats that is widely used to exchange structured data between different applications. The convenience of CSV lies in simplicity. CSV files contain plain text that can be opened by any text editing app, such as Notepad. They can fit well into Excel spreadsheets, and, of course, they can be easily imported and exported from databases. And it's the latter case that we'll explore in this article.

We'll use three different approaches to it. The first one is a mysqldump command. The second one is based on the OUTFILE statement. The third one involves a wizard with flexible settings. Which one is the best? Well, it's up to you to choose.

Read in full to learn how to export MySQL data to CSV.

Notice that the export capabilities of dbForge Studio, the comprehensive MySQL IDE, go beyond the CSV format. Actually, you have 14 formats for export at hand: HTML, TXT, XLS, XLSX, Google Sheets, MDB, RTF, PDF, JSON, XML, CSV, ODBC, DBF, and SQL. Similarly, you can perform data import using the same wizard workflow. The available settings vary between formats, making your experience and capabilities complete.