How to force text string to uppercase / lowercase / proper case in Excel?

In Excel, when you enter some letters or words into the cells, you want to force the text strings to uppercase even though you entered the lowercase or proper case letters and vice versa. Most of us may consider the Data Validation feature in Excel, with this function, we will get a warning when we don’t type the correct case of the text. In this article, I will introduce some interesting ways to force the text to uppercase, lowercase or proper case as you need.

Force the text strings to uppercase / lowercase / proper case with Data Validation

Force the text strings to uppercase / lowercase / proper case with VBA code

Change text to UPPERCASE/lowercase/Proper Case with Kutools for Excel

Force the text strings to uppercase / lowercase / proper case with Data Validation

Data Validation is a powerful tool in Excel, it can help us to do many operations, with its help, we can also force the uppercase, lowercase or proper case of the text strings when typing, please do as follows:

1. Go to click Data > Data Validation > Data Validation, see screenshot:

2. In the Data Validation dialog, under the Settings tab, click the Allow drop down list and choose Custom option, then in the Formula text box, enter this formula =EXACT(UPPER(A1),A1), (A1 stands for a column that you will apply this feature, you can change it to your need ), see screenshot:

3. Then you can create an alert as you need, please click Error Alert tab, and select Stop from the Style drop down list, at the right corner of the Error message text box, enter your own warning message, see screenshot:

4. And then click OK to close the dialog, now when you enter the text string not in uppercase in column A, a warning box will pop out to remind you entering the uppercase letters.

Note:

If you need to force the text strings to lowercase or proper case, please apply the following formulas into the Data Validation in step 2.

Force to lowercase: =EXACT(LOWER(A1),A1);

Force to proper case: =EXACT(PROPER(A1),A1)

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Force the text strings to uppercase / lowercase / proper case with VBA code

With the following VBA code, when you enter the lowercase words into a cell, the lowercase text will be changed to the uppercase letters automatically.

1. Hold down the ALT + F11 keys, and it opens the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Then choose your used worksheet from the left Project Explorer, double click it to open the Module, and then copy and paste following VBA code into the blank Module:

VBA code: Force text string to uppercase

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
'Update 20140603
Target.Value = VBA.UCase(Target.Value)
End Sub

3. Then save and close this code to return to the worksheet, now when you enter text string whenever it is lowercase or proper case, it will become uppercase after tapping the Enter key automatically.

Notes:

1. This code is applied to the whole worksheet.

2. If you cannot find the Project Explorer Pane in the window, you can click View > Project Explorer to open it.

3. To force the words lowercase or proper case, you can apply the following VBA code: (The procedure is the same as the above)

VBA code: Force text string to Lowercase

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
'Update 20140603
Target.Value = VBA.LCase(Target.Value)
End Sub

VBA code: Force text string to proper case

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)
'Update 20140603
Target.Value = Application.WorksheetFunction.Proper(Target.Value)
End Sub

Change text to UPPERCASE/lowercase/Proper Case with Kutools for Excel

If you just want to change some specific texts into UPPERCASE, lowercase or Proper Case, you can apply the Change Case utility of Kutools for Excel to quickly get it done.

After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:

1. Select the texts you want to change case and click Kutools > Text > Change Case. See screenshot:

2. In the Change Case dialog, check the operation option as you need, and you can preview the result in the Preview pane. See screenshot:

3. Click Ok or Apply and the texts have been change case.

Change to UPPERCASE	Change to Proper Case	Change to Sentence case