Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. 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: Specifying Proper Case.

Specifying Proper Case

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 12, 2026)

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If you receive information from others as an odd assortment of upper- and lowercase characters, you may want to put the PROPER worksheet function to work for you. This function converts text so that the first letters of any words are uppercase and everything else is lowercase. Actually, what it does is make everything lowercase except any letters that do not follow another letter. Thus, any letters following spaces, punctuation, or numbers would be converted to uppercase.

As an example, if cell D4 contains "THIS IS MY TEXT", you could use the following formula in cell E4:

=PROPER(D4)

The result is that cell E4 will contain "This Is My Text".

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12046) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Specifying Proper Case.

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 3 + 1?

2026-05-15 11:09:47

J. Woolley

Here are two alternate versions of the MakeProper3 macro in my most recent comment below:

Sub MakeProper4()
If Selection.HasFormula = False Then _
    Selection = Application.Proper(Selection)
End Sub

Notice Application.Proper is the same as WorksheetFunction.Proper except the latter produces a debug dialog if Proper returns an error but the former simply returns the error. Both are equivalent to Excel's PROPER function.

Sub MakeProper5()
Dim cell As Range
If Selection.HasFormula = False Then _
    For Each cell In Selection: cell = StrConv(cell, vbProperCase): Next cell
End Sub

Notice PROPER(...) capitalizes the first letter after any non-letter, reducing the rest to lowercase, while StrConv(..., vbProperCase) ignores non-letters except space, Tab, and CR/LF.


2026-05-15 04:52:06

sandeepkothari

Thanks Woolley.


2026-05-14 16:05:21

J. Woolley

@sandeepkothari
Willy's macro tests an array with a single element (1 or TRUE); I'm not sure why. This version works as well as Willy's:

Sub MakeProper2()
Selection = Evaluate("PROPER(" & Selection.Address & ")")
End Sub

And this version does nothing if Selection includes a formula:

Sub MakeProper3()
If Selection.HasFormula = False Then _
    Selection = Evaluate("PROPER(" & Selection.Address & ")")
End Sub

Notice Selection can be more than one cell.


2026-05-14 09:19:42

jamies

Thanks to J. Woolley for the link to

https://excelribbon.tips.net/T011267_Modifying_Proper_Capitalization.html

gives the sort of code needed to "Get it Right"


2026-05-14 07:36:44

sandeepkothari

Hi Willy, pl explain why you have used the IF function? I tried without it & did not succeed to get the desired result.


2026-05-13 09:59:19

J. Woolley

@jamies
See https://excelribbon.tips.net/T011267_Modifying_Proper_Capitalization.html


2026-05-12 05:43:31

jamies

Problem with "PROPER" is that it does not recognise punctuation appropriately, and such prefixes to "family", or Tribe, "Clan" names or such as "Mac", "Mc", De La etc.

So dealing with "Title" cases needs manual, or scripted handling, or careful use of Substitute actions -
Luckily there is now the Regex facilities.

See such things as REGEXEXTRACT Function

0: Return the first string that matches the pattern.
1: Return all strings that match the pattern as an array.
2: Return capturing groups from the first match as an array.
Note: Capturing groups are parts of a regex pattern surrounded by parentheses "(...)".


2021-05-15 10:09:09

Willy Vanhaelen

If you want to change the case directly in the cell or a range, you can use this one-liner macro:

Sub MakeProper()
Selection = Evaluate("IF({1},PROPER(" & Selection.Address & "))")
End Sub

Of course you can replace PROPER with UPPER or LOWER and the macro will make the changes accordingly.


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