Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Turning Off Automatic Capitalization.

Turning Off Automatic Capitalization

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 1, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365

1

As you busily enter data into a worksheet, you may have noticed that periodically Excel will second-guess what you are doing and capitalize words for you. In general, Excel does this when it thinks you are starting a new sentence. (And, it assumes that the beginning of a cell is always the beginning of a sentence.)

If you find yourself undoing Excel's decisions on this issue quite a bit, you can turn off the feature completely by following these steps:

  1. Display the Excel Options dialog box. (In Excel 2007 click the Office button and then click Excel Options. In Excel 2010 and later versions display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
  2. Click Proofing at the left side of the dialog box.
  3. Click AutoCorrect Options. Excel displays the AutoCorrect dialog box.
  4. Make sure the AutoCorrect tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)

    5. Figure 1. The AutoCorrect tab of the AutoCorrect dialog box.

  5. Clear the Capitalize First Letter of Sentences check box.
  6. Click on OK.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6208) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Turning Off Automatic Capitalization.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is 6 + 5?

2021-05-01 16:10:03

Tomek

in my version of Excel (MS365 Family) first letter in a cell is not capitalized; however if I have a period, exclamation mark, etc. within a cell than the first letter of the next word will be automatically capitalized. I am not complaining, actually I think this works better for me, but i just wanted to share my experience.

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