How to convert first letter of string to uppercase in Excel

Inhaltsverzeichnis Show

Capitalize first letter using formulas
First letter Capital, lower the rest
First letter Capital, disregard the rest
Capitalize first letter using Text Toolkit: Change Case
You may also be interested in

Supposing you have a list of text strings which words are in all uppercase, lowercase or mixed with lowercase and uppercase, in this situation, you need to make the first letter of each word in the cell to be uppercase, and others are lowercase as following screenshot shown. Do you have any good ways to capitalize or uppercase the first letter of each word for multiple cells quickly and easily in Excel?

Capitalize first letter of each word within cell with formula and VBA code

Capitalize first letter only within cell with formula

Capitalize first letter of each word or first letter only with Kutools for Excel

Capitalize first letter of each word within cell with formula and VBA code

To make the first letter of each word within a cell capitalize, you can use the Proper function or a simple VBA code. Please do with following steps:

Method1: Proper function:

1. Enter this formula: =PROPER(A2) into a blank cell next to your data, B2 for instance, see screenshot:

2. And then drag the fill handle down to the cells that you want to apply this formula, and you can see all the first letters of each word within the cell have been capitalized. See screenshot:

Method2: VBA code:

The following VBA code also can help you to uppercase all of the first letter of each word in a cell.

1. Please hold down ALT + F11 keys to open the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Click Insert > Module, and paste the following code in the Module Window.

VBA code: Capitalize first letter of each word in a cell

Sub Proper_Case() 'Updateby20150428 Dim x As Range Dim Workx As Range On Error Resume Next xTitleId = "KutoolsforExcel" Set Workx = Application.Selection Set Workx = Application.InputBox("Range", xTitleId, Workx.Address, Type:=8) For Each x In Workx x.Value = Application.Proper(x.Value) Next End Sub

3. Then press F5 key to execute this code, and select the data range that you want to use in the popped out dialog box, see screenshot:

4. And then click OK button, all the first letter of each word in the cells have become capitalized.

Capitalize the first letter only or the first letter of each word in text string cells

With the help of Kutools for Excel’s Change Case utility, you can quickly change the text strings to upper case, lower case, proper case, sentence case and so on. Click to download Kutools for Excel!

Capitalize first letter only within cell with formula

Sometimes, you just want to uppercase the first letter only and lowercase others in the cell, are you suffered with this problem in Excel? In fact, here is a formula may do you a favor to solve this task.

1. Type this formula into a blank cell besides your data, =UPPER(LEFT(A2,1))&LOWER(RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-1)), see screenshot:

2. Then drag the fill handle to the range of cells which you want to contain this formula, and only the first letter of the cells has become uppercase. See screenshot:

Capitalize first letter of each word or first letter only with Kutools for Excel

If you have Kutools for Excel, with its Change Case feature, you can quickly capitalize both first letter of each word and first letter only in a cell.

After installing Kutools for Excel, please do as follows:

1. Select the data range that you want to use.

2. Click Kutools > Text > Change Case, see screenshot:

3. In the Change Case dialog box, if you select Proper Case, the first letter of each word will be capitalized, see screenshot:

If you choose Sentence case, only the first letter of the text strings are capitalized as following screenshot shown:

Download and free trial Kutools for Excel Now !

Demo: Capitalize first letter of each word or first letter only with Kutools for Excel

No ratings yet. Be the first to rate!

How can we change the case of the first letter from lower to upper in Excel cells? Do we have to type each character manually into every cell? Not anymore! Today I will share three methods of capitalizing first letters in your table.

I believe when it comes to text in Excel, one of the most commonly required tasks is to capitalize first letters in the cells. Whenever you have lists of names, products, tasks, or anything else, you will for sure have some of them (if not all) written only in small or capital letters.

In one of our previous articles we discussed how PROPER function can save the day. But since it capitalizes every word in a cell and lowers other letters, sometimes it can't be a cure-all.

Let's see what other options we have on the example of a shortlist of villains I like the most.

Capitalize first letter using formulas

Excel has lots of useful functions suitable for capitalizing first letter in the cells. However, you can't have both, your data and formula that references it, in one cell. Thus, you need to create a helper column somewhere in your worksheet in order to place the formulas there. When it's done, and calculations are made, you'll be able to replace formulas with their values. Shall we begin?

First letter Capital, lower the rest

To make only the very first letter capital in Excel cell and lower the rest at the same time, start with inserting an additional column for the results. In my example it is column B. Right-click the column name (B) and choose Insert from the context menu. The column is inserted between A and C columns, and you can change its header name if there is one:

Put the cursor into new B2 cell and input the following formula there:

=REPLACE(LOWER(C2),1,1,UPPER(LEFT(C2,1)))

Tip. It is most likely that the rest of the rows will be populated with the adjusted formula automatically. Otherwise, you can quickly copy the formula down the column by drag-n-dropping or double-clicking that small square in the lower-right corner of the cell with a formula.

Let me explain what the formula above means:

UPPER(LEFT(C2,1)) converts the first letter of C2 cell to capital.
REPLACE function is used to make sure that the whole text is returned with one specified letter changed - the first one in our case.
Adding LOWER(C2) as the first argument of the REPLACE function allows us to lower all other letters:

Thus, you get properly looking cells written as sentences.

First letter Capital, disregard the rest

In order to capitalize the first letter of the cell and leave the other characters as they are, we will use the same formula as above with a little modification.

But first, again, make sure to create another column to use the formula. Then, enter the following into B2:

=REPLACE(C2,1,1,UPPER(LEFT(C2,1)))

See, we deleted that "LOWER" part from the beginning of the formula. This little change won't lower all the letters in a cell but will still capitalize the first one:

Tip. Don't forget to copy the formula down if Excel hasn't done it automatically.

Capitalize first letter using Text Toolkit: Change Case

If you decide that you need a quicker and faster way of making first letters in Excel cells capital, you will choose wisely!

Our Change Case from Text Toolkit will look over those pretty little letters of yours. It is available in the collection of 70+ toos for Excel - Ultimate Suite:

Download and install Ultimate Suite collection to your PC.
Run Excel and click the Change Case tool icon in the Text group under the Ablebits Data tab:

The add-in pane will appear on the left side of your Excel window.
Manually select the range of cells where you want to change case, B2:B10 in our case.

Tip. You can select the range before running the tool. It will show the selected range in the corresponding field automatically.
Choose the Sentence case option to make the first letter of each cell capital:

Note. If you want to save a copy of your data just in case, tick off the Back up the worksheet option before making any changes.
Click the Change case button and see the result:

Note. When every word in a cell (except the first one) starts with a capital letter, the add-in will not only capitalize the first character, but also lower the rest.

As you can see, capitalizing letters in Excel is not rocket science. Now you can do it in a couple of mouse-clicks and enjoy the results. Feel free to leave comments and ask questions down below :)