 <p>ok so I solved the problem, the solution is this (var needs to contain results.data)</p> <p>{</p> <pre><code>function handleFileSelect(evt) { var file = evt.target.files[0]; Papa.parse(file, { complete: function (results) { var data = results.data; $(".graphcontainer").append("&lt;div class='parse'&gt;" + data + "&lt;/div&gt;"); } }); } $(function () { $("#csv-file").change(handleFileSelect); }); </code></pre> <p>}</p> <p>thanks for the help from the others</p>