How to Convert Case in Word & Excel (UPPER, lower, Title)

To convert case in Word, select the text and press Shift+F3; each press cycles through lowercase, UPPERCASE and Capitalise Each Word. You can also use the Change Case button (Aa) on the Home tab, which adds Sentence case and tOGGLE cASE. In Excel, use the formulas =UPPER(), =LOWER() and =PROPER(). For text anywhere else, paste it into our case converter and click the case you want.

Here are the details for each app, plus how to get proper sentence case, which none of them do perfectly.

How to convert case in Word

Shift+F3 shortcut

1. Select the text.
2. Press Shift+F3 (on many laptops, Fn+Shift+F3).
3. Press again to cycle: lowercase, UPPERCASE, Capitalise Each Word.

On a Mac, the same shortcut works in Word if your function keys are set to act as standard F keys; otherwise use Fn+Shift+F3 or the menu below.

Change Case button

1. Select the text.
2. On the Home tab, click Change Case (the Aa icon in the Font group).
3. Pick one of:
   • Sentence case. First letter of each sentence capitalised.
   • lowercase
   • UPPERCASE
   • Capitalize Each Word
   • tOGGLE cASE, which flips every letter, handy if you typed with Caps Lock on.

Word's sentence case and title case limits

• Sentence case in Word capitalises the first letter of each sentence but does not know about names. If your text was all capitals, "I MET RAHUL IN DELHI" becomes "I met rahul in delhi". You need to fix proper nouns by hand.
• Capitalize Each Word is not true title case. It capitalises every word, including "a", "of", "and" and "the". For a heading such as "The Lord Of The Rings", you then lowercase the small words manually.

All caps formatting vs real capitals

Word also has an All Caps font effect (Ctrl+Shift+A, or in the Font dialog). It only changes how the text looks; the letters underneath stay as typed. If you copy that text elsewhere it may come out in lowercase. To make the change permanent, use Change Case instead.

How to convert case in Excel

Excel has three case functions:

Steps to change a whole column:

1. In an empty column next to your data, type =PROPER(A2) (or UPPER/LOWER) and press Enter.
2. Double-click the fill handle (the small square at the bottom-right of the cell) to copy it down.
3. Select the new column, copy it, then right-click the original column and choose Paste Special > Values.
4. Delete the helper column.

Step 3 matters. If you delete the original column without pasting values, the formulas break.

Sentence case in Excel

There is no SENTENCE function. For one sentence per cell, this works:

=UPPER(LEFT(A1,1))&LOWER(MID(A1,2,LEN(A1)))

It capitalises the first character and lowercases everything else. As with Word, names and "I" in the middle of the text end up lowercase.

PROPER quirks

=PROPER() capitalises any letter that follows a non-letter. That gives "O'Neil" (good) but also "It'S" and "Don'T" (bad), and turns "iPhone" into "Iphone" and "USA" into "Usa". Scan the results.

Flash Fill

In Excel 2013 and later, you can type the first one or two results by hand in the next column, then press Ctrl+E (Flash Fill). Excel guesses the pattern and fills the rest. It is quick for names, but check the output.

The same UPPER, LOWER and PROPER functions work in Google Sheets.

How to change case in Google Docs

Select the text, then Format > Text > Capitalization and choose lowercase, UPPERCASE or Title Case. Google Docs' Title Case capitalises every word, like Word's. There is no sentence case option, so for that, use the case converter and paste the result back.

Convert case online

Our case converter works on any text you can paste: an email, a PDF extract, a WhatsApp message, a list of names. It runs in your browser, so the text is not sent anywhere.

Paste your text and press:

• UPPERCASE and lowercase
• Title Case, which capitalises the first letter of every word (fix "of", "and", "the" afterwards if you need strict headline style)
• Sentence case, which lowercases everything and capitalises the first letter after each full stop, question mark or exclamation mark
• camelCase, snake_case and kebab-case for variable names, file names and URL slugs
• aLtErNaTiNg case, mostly for jokes

Then copy the result. If the text came from a PDF and has a break at the end of every line, run it through remove line breaks first; our guide to removing line breaks from PDF text shows how.

Typed a whole paragraph with Caps Lock on?

Paste it in and press Sentence case. Then scan for names, places, "I" and acronyms (NEET, UPSC, PDF), which will have been lowercased, and fix them by hand.

Which case to use

Many Indian exam and government forms ask for your name in capital letters exactly as on your certificate. Type it carefully rather than converting, so that initials and spacing match the document.

Common mistakes

• Using the All Caps font effect and expecting the copied text to stay uppercase.
• Deleting the original Excel column before pasting the formula results as values.
• Trusting sentence case with names. Every converter, including ours, lowercases proper nouns.
• Using Capitalize Each Word for a formal title and leaving "Of" and "And" capitalised.
• Converting acronyms: PROPER and Title Case turn "GST" into "Gst". Fix them after converting.
• Re-checking a length limit for nothing. Changing case never changes the character or word count, so if the text fitted before, it still fits. If it did not, the word counter shows how much to cut.

Questions