Excel Formula: Capitalize first letter of text string or each word
In this tutorial, you will find the formulas on capitalizing the first letter of a certain text string or each word and understand how the formulas work.
| Capitalize first letter of the text string in cell | Capitalize first letter of each word in cell |
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Capitalize first letter of the text string in cell
Capitalize first letter of text string disregard other letters
Generic formula:
| UPPER(LEFT(text))&MID(text,2,LEN(text)) |
Arguments
| Text: the text string you want to uppercase the first letter. |
How this formula work
Example: for instance, you want to uppercase the first letter in cell B3, then use below formula in a blank cell.
| =UPPER(LEFT(B3))&MID(B3,2,LEN(B3)) |
Press Enter key, and if you need, drag the fill handle down to fill cells with this formula and uppercase all first letters of each cell.
Explanation
UPPER function: Uppercase all letters in the text string.
LEFT function: Extract a given number of characters from left side of the text string, in this formula, it just extracts the first character. Thus, UPPER(LEFT(B3) will uppercase the first character from left side.
MID function: Extract a given number of characters from a specific position of the text string.
LEN: Get the number of characters in the text string. Thus, MID(B3,2,LEN(B3)) returns all characters except the first one.
Remarks:
1. With this formula, it will convert the first letter to uppercase only, but disregard other letters.
2. If the first one characters are not alphabetical, it will return the original value.
Capitalize first letter of text string and make others lower
Generic formula:
| REPLACE(LOWER(text),1,1,UPPER(LEFT(text,1))) |
Arguments
| Text: the text string you want to uppercase the first letter and lowercase other characters. |
How this formula work
Example: for instance, you want to uppercase the first letter in cell B3, then use below formula in a blank cell.
| =REPLACE(LOWER(B3),1,1,UPPER(LEFT(B3,1))) |
Press Enter key, and if you need, drag the fill handle down to fill cells with this formula and uppercase all first letters of each cell.
Explanation
UPPER(LEFT(B3,1)): convert the first characters of a text string to capital.
LOWER(B3): convert all characters in the text string to lower case.
REPLACE function: replace the old text string with a new text string.
Remarks:
1. With this formula, it will convert the first letter to uppercase, and make other letters in lower case.
2. If the first character are not alphabetical, it will return the original value.
Capitalize first letter of each word in cell
If you want to capitalize every first letter of each word in the cell, you can do as these:
Generic formula:
| PROPER(text) |
Arguments
| Text: the text string you want to uppercase the first letter of each word. |
How this formula work
Example: for instance, you want to uppercase the first letter of each word in cell B3, then use below formula in a blank cell
| =PROPER(B3) |
Press Enter key, and if you need, drag the fill handle down to fill cells with this formula and uppercase all first letters of each cell.
Remarks:
1. The Proper function will convert the letters which are separated by non-alphabetical characters to uppercase. See screenshot:
2. The Proper function does not affect numbers and punctuations.
Sample File
Click to download sample fileRelative Formulas
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