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 15, 2021)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


1

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Saving All Open Documents

Got a lot of open documents you are working with? You can save them all at one time by just holding down the Shift key ...

Discover More

Replacing Multiple Spaces with Tabs

If you get a document or some text that has multiple consecutive spaces used to align information, you'll undoubtedly be ...

Discover More

Swapping Two Strings

Strings are used quite frequently in macros. You may want to swap the contents of two string variables, and you can do so ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Cleaning Text

You can use the CLEAN worksheet function to remove any non-printable characters from a cell. This can come in handy when ...

Discover More

Getting the Name of the Parent Workbook

If you need to insert into a cell the name of the workbook in which a worksheet is contained, you can use the CELL ...

Discover More

Leaving a Cell Value Unchanged If a Condition Is False

Ever want the IF function to only return a value if the condition it is testing is true, and not if the condition is ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 5 - 0?

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.


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.