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.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 12, 2026)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021
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.
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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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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:
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