You can change the capitalization, or case, of selected text in a document by clicking a single button on the Home tab called Change Case.
Change case
To change the case of selected text in a document, do the following:
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Select the text for which you want to change the case.
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Go to Home > Change case
. -
Do one of the following:
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To capitalize the first letter of a sentence and leave all other letters as lowercase, click Sentence case.
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To exclude capital letters from your text, click lowercase.
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To capitalize all of the letters, click UPPERCASE.
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To capitalize the first letter of each word and leave the other letters lowercase, click Capitalize Each Word.
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To shift between two case views (for example, to shift between Capitalize Each Word and the opposite, cAPITALIZE eACH wORD), click tOGGLE cASE.
Tips:
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To apply small capital (Small Caps) to your text, select the text, and then on the Home tab, in the Font group, click the arrow in the lower-right corner. In the Font dialog box, under Effects, select the Small Caps check box.
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To undo the case change, press CTRL+ Z.
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To use a keyboard shortcut to change between lowercase, UPPERCASE, and Capitalize Each Word, select the text and press SHIFT + F3 until the case you want is applied.
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.See also
Insert a drop cap
Choose AutoCorrect options for capitalization
Change case
To change the case of selected text in a document, do the following:
-
Select the text for which you want to change the case.
-
Go to Home > Change case
. -
Do one of the following:
-
To capitalize the first letter of a sentence and leave all other letters as lowercase, click Sentence case.
-
To exclude capital letters from your text, click lowercase.
-
To capitalize all of the letters, click UPPERCASE.
-
To capitalize the first letter of each word and leave the other letters lowercase, click Capitalize Each Word.
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To shift between two case views (for example, to shift between Capitalize Each Word and the opposite, cAPITALIZE eACH wORD), click tOGGLE cASE.
Tips:
-
To apply small capital (Small Caps) to your text, select the text, and then on the Format menu, select Font, and in the Font dialog box, under Effects, select the Small Caps box.
Small Caps shortcut key: ⌘ + SHIFT + K
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To undo the case change, press ⌘ + Z .
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To use a keyboard shortcut to change between lowercase, UPPERCASE, and Capitalize Each Word, select the text and then press fn+ SHIFT + F3 until the style you want is applied.
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See also
Insert a drop cap
Choose AutoCorrect options for capitalization
PowerPoint for the web supports changing case. See the procedure below.
Word for the web doesn’t support changing case. Use the desktop application to open the document and change text case there, or else you can manually change the casing of text in Word for the web.
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Select the text you want to change.
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Go to Home > More Font Options > Change case.
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Choose the case you want to use.
Quickly convert text to uppercase
Updated on December 19, 2020
When you’re working on a Microsoft Word document and have a string of lowercase text that should be in uppercase, don’t retype it. Instead, use the Word Change Case tool to change some or all of the text to a different case, such as all caps.
Instructions in this article apply to Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2019, Word 2016, Word 2013, and Word 2010.
Microsoft Word Uppercase Shortcut Key
The fastest way to change text to all caps is to highlight the text and press the keyboard shortcut Shift+F3.
Press Ctrl+A to highlight all the text on the page.
You may need to press the shortcut combination a few times because the text in the document might be in another case such as sentence case or all lowercase.
On Word for Mac, select the text you want to change to uppercase, then press ⌘+SHIFT+K.
Change to Uppercase Using the Ribbon
Another way to change the text case is to go to the Home tab on the ribbon.
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Select the text you want to change to uppercase, then go to the Home tab.
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In the Font group, select the Change Case drop-down arrow.
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Choose UPPERCASE to change the selected text to all uppercase letters.
Word Online doesn’t have a shortcut that changes the case of the selected text. Either edit the text manually or open the document in the desktop version of Word to change the case.
Word offers other ways to change the text case:
- Sentence Case: Capitalize the first letter of each selected sentence and change the remaining text to lower case.
- lowercase: Change the selected text to lowercase.
- Capitalize Each Word: Change the first letter of each selected word to uppercase format.
- tOGGLE cASE: Change the first letter of every word to lowercase and the remaining letters to uppercase.
Any time you change the case format of text in Word, use the Ctrl+Z shortcut to undo it.
Don’t Have Microsoft Word?
Though it’s simple to do this in Microsoft Word, you don’t have to use Word to change the text to all caps. There are online services that perform the same function. For example, go to the Convert Case website or Capitalize My Title website and paste the text into the text field and choose from a variety of cases. Select from uppercase, lowercase, sentence case, capitalized case, alternating case, title case, and inverse case. After the conversion, copy the text and paste it where you need it.
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You can stop manually changing your text if you want to adjust the capitalization. We’ll show you how to easily change letter case in Word.
If you want to change the capitalization of a word, sentence, or paragraph, you don’t have to do this manually in Microsoft Word. You can easily adjust the text to all uppercase or lowercase, sentence case or toggle case, or capitalize the first letter of each word.
While not difficult to do, changing the capitalization or letter case in one fell swoop may be one of those Microsoft Word features you didn’t know existed. So here, we’ll show you how to do this in Word on your computer, the web, and your mobile device.
Change Capitalization and Letter Case on Your Desktop
On both Windows and Mac, you can make your text changes the same way.
- Open your document in Word and select the text you want to edit. You can do this easily by dragging your cursor through it, whether a word, phrase or more.
- Next, go to the Home tab and click the Change Case button in the Font section of the ribbon. The icon for the button is an uppercase and lowercase letter A (Aa).
- Select the capitalization option or letter case you’d like to use from the drop-down list. Each option shows its appearance as its name.
If you choose Uppercase and want to use a smaller version of the capital letters, right-click the selected text and choose Font. On the Font tab of the pop-up window, check the box for Small Caps and click OK.
Capitalization and Letter Case in Word for the Web
You have the same options for adjusting capitalization or letter case in Word for the web.
- Open your document in Word online and select the text you want to edit by dragging your cursor through it.
- Go to the Home tab and click More Font Options (three dots) in the ribbon.
- Move your cursor to Change Case and make your selection in the pop-out menu.
Capitalization and Letter Case in the Word Mobile App
If you use Microsoft Word on your mobile device, you’ll be glad to know you can also change the capitalization or letter case in the app.
- Open your document in the Word mobile app and select the text. You can do this by tapping a word to highlight it and, if necessary, dragging the handles to include all the text you want to change.
- Tap the three dots on the right of the toolbar above the keyboard.
- When the menu opens at the bottom, be sure Home is selected. Then tap More Formatting.
- Choose Change Case and then select the capitalization or letter case option.
Make Text Changes Easy in Microsoft Word
Little-known features like this one to change the capitalization or letter case in just a couple of clicks or taps can be a huge time-saver. You can eliminate manual typing and reduce the risk of errors when changing your text simultaneously.
For more, take a look at how to add a drop cap in Microsoft Word and how to adjust the font-kerning in a Word document.
Updated: 12/30/2021 by
In Microsoft Word, you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift+F3 to change selected text between uppercase, lowercase, and title case.
Selecting a case
- Highlight all the text you want to change. If you want to change the case for the whole document you can use the Ctrl+A keyboard shortcut to select everything.
- Hold down Shift and press F3.
- When you hold Shift and press F3, the text toggles from sentence case (first letter uppercase and the rest lowercase), to all uppercase (all capital letters), and then all lowercase.
Note
If you are using a laptop or an Apple Mac, the function keys may not be enabled without the use of the Fn key. You may need to hold Fn, in addition to Shift, when you press F3.
If you’re not able to get Shift+F3 to work in Microsoft Word 2007 or later, you can try the following option instead.
- In the menu bar, on the Home tab, click the Change Case icon, which has an uppercase ‘A’ and lowercase ‘a.’
- Select the appropriate option from the list of values. For example, if you want to change to all uppercase letters, select the UPPERCASE option. If you want to change to all lowercase letters, select the lowercase option.
Tip
Use our text tool to convert any text from uppercase to lowercase.
Select the text you want to change to uppercase, then go to the Home tab. In the Font group, select the Change Case drop-down arrow. Choose UPPERCASE to change the selected text to all uppercase letters.
Contents
- 1 How do you make all words in a Word document capital?
- 2 How do you auto capitalize all letters in Word?
- 3 How do you capitalize without retyping in Word?
- 4 Why is shift F3 not working?
- 5 How do I turn on auto capitalization in Windows 10?
- 6 Why are all my i’s capitalized in word?
- 7 How do you capitalize all letters in word on a Mac?
- 8 How do you select all text in word?
- 9 What is the change case?
- 10 What is a toggle case?
- 11 What is upper case character?
- 12 What does Alt F4 do in Word?
- 13 What does the F10 key do?
- 14 What does Shift F7 mean?
- 15 Where is auto capitalization in settings?
- 16 How do you capitalize on a computer?
- 17 How do you auto capitalize the letter I?
- 18 How do you auto correct i to i?
- 19 Where is F3 on a Mac?
- 20 What is F3 key on Mac?
How do you make all words in a Word document capital?
Now you can simply choose “Capitalization” from the Format menu in Docs, and select one of the following: lowercase, to make all the letters in your selection lowercase. UPPERCASE, to capitalize all the letters in your selection.
How do you auto capitalize all letters in Word?
To use a keyboard shortcut to change between lowercase, UPPERCASE, and Capitalize Each Word, select the text and press SHIFT + F3 until the case you want is applied.
How do you capitalize without retyping in Word?
Select the text you want to change the case of, using your mouse or keyboard. On the Home tab of the Ribbon, go to the Fonts command group and click the arrow next to the Change Case button.
Why is shift F3 not working?
Shift F3 Not Working When The “Fn” Key Is Locked
2.Fn + Caps Lock. Fn + Lock Key (A keyboard key with only a lock icon on it) Press and Hold the Fn key to enable/disable.
How do I turn on auto capitalization in Windows 10?
To turn on auto-caps of the first word please follow these steps:
- Open Settings, and click/tap on Devices.
- Click/tap on Typing on the left side, and turn On (default) or Off Capitalize the first letter of each sentence under Touch keyboard on the right side for what you want. (
Why are all my i’s capitalized in word?
There are multiple reasons why everything may become capitalized in Microsoft Word: The Caps Lock button on the keyboard is turned on. One of the Shift keys on the keyboard has physically jammed. A font type has been selected that only has upper case letters.
How do you capitalize all letters in word on a Mac?
Switch between uppercase and lowercase in Word on Mac
1) Select the text, whether a single word or entire document. 2) Hold Shift and press F3. You can continue to hold the Shift key and click F3 to move through the uppercase, lowercase, and capital options until you get the one you want.
How do you select all text in word?
Select all text
- Click anywhere within the document.
- Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard to select all text in the document.
What is the change case?
A change case is used to define new requirements for a system or to modify the existing requirements of a system. Defining new requirements for a system indicate the likeliness of the change occurring and indicate the impact of that change. Example1: Change case to define new requirement.
What is a toggle case?
Toggle case is used when you want to automatically change the case of the text you have already typed. If you highlight a portion of text it will change all the lower case to uppercase and all lower case to upper case in one click. Just highlight the text and click on toggle case and it will change for you.
What is upper case character?
Uppercase characters are capital letters; lowercase characters are small letters. For example, box is in lowercase while BOX is in uppercase. The term is a vestige of the days when typesetters kept capital letters in a box above the lowercase letters.
What does Alt F4 do in Word?
Alt + F4 is a Windows keyboard shortcut that completely closes the application you’re using. It differs slightly from Ctrl + F4, which closes the current window of the application you’re viewing. Laptop users may need to press the Fn key in addition to Alt + F4 to use this shortcut.
What does the F10 key do?
F10. The F10 key will open the menu bar or similar options within most open Microsoft apps. Hitting Shift + F10 on a highlighted file, link or icon will act in the same way as a right-click.
What does Shift F7 mean?
F7. Commonly used to spell check and grammar check a document in Microsoft programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Word etc. Shift+F7 runs a Thesaurus check on word highlighted. Turns on the Caret Browsing in Mozilla Firefox.
Where is auto capitalization in settings?
Open the messaging app of your choice.
- On the on-screen keyboard, tap the gear icon.
- In the Settings menu, select “Text correction.”
- Swipe up on the Text Correction menu until you locate “Auto-capitalization.”
- Tap the slider next to “Auto-capitalization” so that it appears gray instead of blue.
How do you capitalize on a computer?
Press and hold either the left or right Shift and while continuing to hold the Shift key press the letter you want caps. Using the Shift key is the most common method of creating a capital letter on a computer.
How do you auto capitalize the letter I?
Or use Word’s keyboard shortcut, Shift + F3 on Windows or fn + Shift + F3 for Mac, to change selected text between lowercase, UPPERCASE or capitalizing each word.
How do you auto correct i to i?
How to use Auto-Correction and predictive text on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
- Open the Settings app.
- Tap General > Keyboard.
- Turn on Auto-Correction. By default, Auto-Correction is on.
Where is F3 on a Mac?
The Function of Each F Key
| Mac Function Keys | |
|---|---|
| F1 | Reduce the screen’s brightness |
| F2 | Increase the screen’s brightness |
| F3 | Activates Expose view, which shows you every app that’s running |
| F4 | Showcases your apps or opens the dashboard for access to widgets |
What is F3 key on Mac?
Mission Control
These are the primary defaults of what function keys do on an Apple keyboard when connected to a Mac: F1 – Decrease display brightness. F2 – Increase display brightness. F3 – Open Mission Control.
Word offers you a few ways to change and control capitalization in a document when you’re trying to get stuff done.
Managing uppercase and lowercase text in Word can be a challenge. Sometimes Word automatically tries to correct a word based on capitalization but makes the wrong assumption. Other times you might have an entire word or phrase in lowercase that you want to convert to uppercase, or vice versa. Word provides several options and shortcuts that can help you more easily change and control the capitalization of text. Here’s how they work.
SEE: 83 Excel tips every user should master (TechRepublic)
For this article, I’m working with the version of Word from Microsoft 365. But the tips here apply to any desktop version of Word from the past few years though not to the free online edition.
By default, Word automatically capitalizes words in a certain context, such as those at the beginning of a sentence or the days of the week. If you’d prefer to handle the capitalization yourself, you can control these options. From Word, click the File menu and select Options. At the Word Options window, select the Proofing category and click the button for AutoCorrect Options (Figure A).
Figure A
Make sure the AutoCorrect tab is selected. Here, you can check or uncheck several options for capitalization. The first option automatically changes the second letter in a word from uppercase to lowercase if you type two uppercase characters in a row.
The next three options control capitalization for the first letter in a sentence, the first letter in a table cell, and the first letter in a day of the week.
The fifth option changes the appropriate letters in a word from uppercase to lowercase if you accidentally press the Caps Lock key and then turn it off in the middle of typing the word.
Experiment with some of these settings turned on and off to see whether the autocorrect feature helps you or gets in your way (Figure B).
Figure B
If you wish to keep all or most of these autocorrect settings enabled but don’t want certain words automatically changed, just add them as exceptions. To do this, click the Exceptions button.
The first section for First Letter will not change the first letter from lowercase to uppercase for any entries. Scroll down the list to see the existing entries. Select any you want to delete and click Remove. Type a new word or term that you want to include in the list and click Add (Figure C).
Figure C
The second section for Initial Caps will not change the second letter in a word from uppercase to lowercase if the first two letters are uppercase. Again, select any existing entries you want to remove. Type any words or terms you want to include and click Add (Figure D).
Figure D
The third section for Other Corrections applies to any words that don’t fit the first two sections. Type a word or words you wish to include and click Add (Figure E).
Figure E
When finished, keep clicking OK until you’ve closed all the Word Options windows and are back at your document.
Next, you can quickly change a word from lowercase to uppercase or vice versa. Place your cursor anywhere in a word whose case you want to change. If you need to change the case for multiple words, select them all. Click the Home menu and then click the Change Case button on the Ribbon (the one with the Aa symbol).
The button displays a menu with five options: Sentence case changes the word’s capitalization to match that of the overall sentence. Lowercase changes all the letters in the word to lowercase. Uppercase changes all the letters in the word to uppercase. Capitalize each word capitalizes only the first letter of the word or words. Toggle Case changes each individual letter in the word from uppercase to lowercase, or vice versa (Figure F).
Figure F
Finally, you can more quickly change the case of a word or words through a keyboard shortcut. Place your cursor in the word you want to change or select multiple words. Hold down the Shift key and press F3. Press F3 again and then again. As you press F3, Word cycles through three different capitalization modes: all uppercase, all lowercase, and first letters uppercase. Release the key when you’ve applied your desired capitalization (Figure G).
Figure G
You can change the case of selected text in a document by clicking the Change Case button on the ribbon. For example, you can change the selected text from lowercase to UPPERCASE.
-
Select the text for which you want to change the case.
-
On the Home tab, click Change Case
. -
Choose an option from the menu:
-
To capitalize the first letter of a sentence and leave all other letters lowercase, click Sentence case.
-
To exclude capital letters from your text, click lowercase.
-
To capitalize all of the letters, click UPPERCASE.
-
To capitalize the first letter of each word and leave the other letters lowercase, click Capitalize Each Word.
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To shift between two case views (for example, between Capitalize Each Word and the opposite, cAPITALIZE eACH wORD, click tOGGLE cASE.
Notes:
-
To undo the case change, press
+ Z . -
To format text in all small capital letters: Select the text, and then press COMMAND + SHIFT + K.
-
.
+ Z . -
Select the text for which you want to change the case.
-
On the Home tab, under Font group, click Change Case
. -
Choose an option from the pop-up menu:
-
To capitalize the first letter of a sentence and leave all other letters lowercase, click Sentence case.
-
To exclude capital letters from your text, click lowercase.
-
To capitalize all of the letters, click UPPERCASE.
-
To capitalize the first letter of each word and leave the other letters lowercase, click Title Case.
-
To shift between two case views (for example, between Capitalize Each Word and the opposite, cAPITALIZE eACH wORD, click tOGGLE cASE.
Notes:
-
To undo the case change, press
+ Z . -
To change case by using a keyboard shortcut, select the text, and then press SHIFT + F3 until the style you want—title case, all caps, or lowercase—is selected.
-
See also
Align or justify text
Apply a drop cap
Convert text to make each word start with an initial uppercase or capital letter. For example “See me run” becomes “See Me Run” instead. One rule of standard English is to capitalize a proper noun that is a specific person (such as John Smith), place (such as Paris), or thing (such as the Eiffel Tower).
Another rule is to capitalize the first word of a sentence or quote such as he said, “Yes, I will.” The names of days and months such as Tuesday and January are also capitalized as are holidays such as Halloween and Memorial Day. Capitalize a person’s title when used with their name such as President Smith will speak, and when a president speaks we always attend.
Capitalize a direction when it refers to an area such as when you come from the West, but do not capitalize if you refer to a direction such as I go north on Main Street every day. Capitalize words such as Main Street when they refer to a specific location not just a street in the city. Concerning capital letters in other languages, these vary greatly from language to language with German a particular example of rules that depart from English standard usage.
Some writing systems make no distinction between uppercase and lowercase.
When you have text in your document that is in the wrong case, you might think that you have a lot of manual editing ahead of you. Luckily Word offers a solution that you can use when you need to know how to convert capital letter to small letter in Word.
How to Change Capital Letter to Small Letter in Laptop with Word
- Open your document.
- Select the text.
- Choose the Home tab.
- Click the Change Case button, then choose lowercase.
Our guide continues below with additional information on how to convert capital letter to small letter in Word when you need to change a lot of your text that has the wrong case applied to it.
In an ideal world, everyone would type everything with correct spelling, correct grammar, and in the correct case.
Unfortunately, that is not the case, so we need to employ the use of dedicated tools to correct situations where words and sentences are incorrect.
Many users of Microsoft Word 2010 are familiar with the spelling and grammar checks that the program offers, but you might not be aware that you can also convert capital letters to small letters in Word 2010.
More commonly referred to as “uppercase” and “lowercase,” it can be frustrating to receive a document from a coworker or team member that is written without correct upper and lower case usage.
You may have thought that you would need to retype the entire document, but Word 2010 can help speed up the process by converting an entire document of uppercase letters to lowercase.
Do you have sections in your document that you don’t need? Our how to delete section break in Word article will show you how to remove those sections by eliminating the breaks.
Switching Uppercase to Lowercase in Word 2010 (Guide with Pictures)
Frequent Internet usage has taught most people that using all uppercase letters when typing makes the reader think that they are shouting.
However, some people still insist on typing in uppercase letters if they think it helps them get their point across.
Regardless of the intentions of the original writer, uppercase writing has no place in a document that needs to be correctly formatted with proper case usage and punctuation.
Continue reading to learn how to change a Word 2010 selection from all capital uppercase letters to all smaller lowercase letters.
Step 1: Open the document in Word 2010.
Step 2: Use your mouse to highlight the uppercase section of the document that you want to convert to lowercase.
If the entire document is uppercase, then you can just press Ctrl + A on your keyboard to select everything.
Step 3: Click the Home tab at the top of the window.
Step 3: Click the Change Case drop-down menu in the Font section of the ribbon at the top of the window, then click the lowercase option.
You will notice that you also have some other options that you can apply to the selection, including Sentence Case, Capitalize each word, and Toggle Case.
If you are unsure of which option is best for you, you can try each one on your selection until you achieve the desired result.
If you are looking to upgrade to a newer version of Word, then Office 365 could be a good choice for you.
See also
- How to insert a check mark in Microsoft Word
- How to do small caps in Microsoft Word
- How to center text in Microsoft Word
- How to merge cells in Microsoft Word tables
- How to insert a square root symbol in Microsoft Word
Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.
His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.
Read his full bio here.