How make first letter in excel

Capitalize the first letter in Excel

Capitalize the first letter in Excel is very easy and you have 3 tools to do that

• By formula
• With Power Query
• With VBA

Capitalize the first letter by formula

To capitalize the first letter of each word in your cells by formula, just write the PROPER function

=PROPER(B2) or =PROPER([@columnName])

But the job isn’t finished 🤔

Capitalize the first letter with Power Query

If you build a query to manipulate your data with Power Query, you can quickly capitalize the first letter of a column.

1. Select one or more columns
2. Right-click in the header of the columns
3. Go to Transform
4. Capitalize each word

This technique is much better because you don’t duplicate the contain of your column. The transformation remplaces the previous contain of the column.

Capitalize the first letter with VBA

In VBA, the code to transform your string is the following possible with the instruction StrConv and the option vbProperCase

I would suggest not using the StrConv’s vbProper method, rather, use WorksheetFunction.Proper instead.. Here are the two methods acting on the same text string. the Worksheet function method appears to be more robust (compare the output inside the parentheses and you will see what I mean).

MsgBox StrConv(«Here is (one-type of) problem.», vbProperCase)

Источник

Get first letter of each word in a sentence except some keywords

I think this one be tricky, but I wanted to hear if anybody might have a solution.

I need to create a formula which picks up the first letter in each of the words in a list of names, for instance:

the university of electronic science and technology of china

UESTC (‘the’, ‘of’, ‘and’, ‘a’ to be avoided if possible)

What I tried so far:

4 Answers 4

Good question! I think your best option is to create your own function using VBA. Add the code below to a new module in the VBA editor and you can use the function on your worksheets like this:

Which would return UESTC , as per your example

Ok, I found a somewhat ridiculous answer which is basically concatenating a lot of ifs to loop through each word (VBA would be easier here). Below formula is for up to 9 words. If your strings have more you just have to add some FIND(A1,» «)+1 . Should the formula not work for you, delete the returns in it.

If you’re using Excel 2016 or 365, which has the CONCAT function available, the following formula will work with any length of string:

Note that this is an array formula, which must be entered by double clicking into a cell, pasting the formula, then pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER

It will always include the first letter of the first word, even if it is one of the key words to exclude. All other keywords are excluded. Generally the first letter of the first word should always be included, but if you need it removed as well, I can modify the formula further.

Источник

How to capitalize first letter in Excel cells

by Natalia Sharashova, updated on March 17, 2023

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:

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:

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:

1. Download and install Ultimate Suite collection to your PC.
2. 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.

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.

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 🙂

You may also be interested in

Table of contents

Thank for your suggestion

I am loving this website. Could you share the formula for capitalizing each first word in every sentence? I tried the following approach:

It capitalizes the first sentence only.

Hello!
I don’t think it’s possible to do this with a regular Excel formula. We have a tool that can solve your task in a couple of clicks — Change Case tool. It is available as a part of our Ultimate Suite for Excel that you can install in a trial mode and check how it works for free.

It will see the words as proper now and make every first word capital

I downloaded from here the Ablebits suites for excel and it works perfectly.
Thanks, I am now following you for more excellent tools.
Regards

Hey! Thanks for this, was very usefull.
I have just one cuestion: ВїWhat about thar achivement of «1,1»?
I understand why you use the number 1 for this «(LEFT(C2,1)», but, for this no . «(LOWER(C2),1,1»
Regards from Argentina!
Ignacio.

Hello!
Your question is about the syntax of the REPLACE function. Read more about this in this article.

I have below text in single cell.

commercial bank of qatar
doha bank

I need output like below in single cell.

Commercial bank of qatar
Doha bank

Hello!
Have you tried the ways described in this blog post? If they don’t work for you, then please describe your task in detail, I’ll try to suggest a solution.

Currently trying to extract the last 3 letters from a specified cell, with only the first letter from those three being capitalized.
The formula I am currently using is: =UPPER(RIGHT(B4,3))

This gets me the last three letters from a specified cell, «NES», how do I edit the formula so that only the letter «N» is capitalized while «ES» is not capitalized??

Thank you very much.
The ultimate suit is really awesome, makes the work really easy.

Hi Sir im trying to use the sentence case but that dont give what i require for example (Lecture Notes in Physics: Chiral Soliton Models for Baryons (Hardcover) )im using sentence formula and i chnages these sentence as Lecture notes in physics: chiral soliton models for baryons (hardcover)

Hi Saleem,
Please have a look at this part of the article above: First letter Capital, lower the rest
If you still have difficulties, please provide the exact formula you’re using that doesn’t work for you.

Sir I need ur help in the case of how to adjust or make the first letter capital always when I’m writing any word on my excel. Tank u

Hello!
I recommend reading the article about changing case in Excel

Hi Alexander,
Thank you so much for your formula below is exactly what I am looking for!!
=PROPER(REPLACE(LOWER(C2),1,1,UPPER(LEFT(C2,1))))

(Thank you!) & (Bless you!) = Exactly what I am thinking right now
// i was just having hard times importing some book titles
Thanks again!

can you tell me which formula u did use for the casing

Sir, I need to convert multiple sentences into sentence case. Ablebits is able to do that, but one problem: if I had intentionally capitalized the first letter of a word (for example, a proper noun such as my name Selvaraj), Ablebits converts its Upper case into lower case. Selvaraj becomes selvaraj. This is not right. I just don’t what the tool to disturb any letter that I have intentionally made caps. It should only change the first letter of the sentence into caps and leave everything else undisturbed. How to resolve this? Thank you.
One more: When you use the Ablebits, it backs up the original sheet. I don’t want that. How to solve it? Thank you.

Sir, I tried using sentence case in my file and made sure that your name had remained written correctly — i.e. Selvaraj. Only the first letter of a sentence is transformed into upper case. Other letters do not change. Please see what version of Ablebits Tools you are using and compare it with the current one (https://www.ablebits.com/downloads/index.php). Perhaps you just need an update. If you have any more questions, I will be pleased to answer them.

Hi I am using your formula =REPLACE(LOWER(C2),1,1,UPPER(LEFT(C2,1)))
how to I do it if the cell has more than one word
i.e my cell has MR A G SMITH however I wish to change to to Mr A G Smith
the formula above converts it to Mr a g smith
thank you in advance

Hello Nim!
Please try the following formula:

I hope it’ll be helpful.

Very helpful, thank you

Really appreciated Mr Alex, but whats the formula if i wish the have JOHN Doe Smith in a cell?

Hello!
Have you tried using the PROPER function? What result do you want to get?

Its only offering me option of numbers of characters. But what happens to a list of names with different numbers of characters.

Hi!
The PROPER function works on any number of characters in a cell. What is the problem?

Sorry but Tyler Durden is not a villain, great otherwise.

Thank you for the help.
God Bless You! 🙂

i need a small software for a manufacturing company can u help me.

Copyright © 2003 – 2023 Office Data Apps sp. z o.o. All rights reserved.

Microsoft and the Office logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Google Chrome is a trademark of Google LLC.

Источник

How to Capitalize First Letter of a Text String in Excel (using Formula & VBA)

Apart from using Excel with numeric data, a lot of people also use it with text data. It could as simple as keeping a record of names to something more complex.

When working with text data, a common task is to make the data consistent by capitalizing the first letter in each cell (or to capitalize the first letter of each word in all the cells)

In this tutorial, I will show you a couple of methods to capitalize the first letter in Excel cells.

So let’s get started!

This Tutorial Covers:

Capitalize First Letter Using Formula

There can be two scenarios where you want to capitalize:

1. The first letter of each word
2. Only the first letter of the first word

Capitalize the First Letter of Each Word

This one is fairly easy to do – as Excel has a dedicated function for this.

The PROPER function, whose purpose of existence is to capitalize the first letter of each word.

Suppose you have a dataset as shown below and you want to quickly convert the first letter of each word into upper case.

Below is the formula you can use:

This would capitalize the first letter of each word in the referenced cell.

Pretty straight forward!

Once you have the desired result, you can copy the cells that have the formula and paste it as values so it’s no longer linked to each other.

Capitalize Only the First Letter of the First Word Only

This one is a little more tricky than the previous one – as there is no inbuilt formula in Excel to capitalize only the first letter of the first word.

However, you can still do this (easily) with a combination of formulas.

Again, there could be two scenarios where you want to do this:

1. Capitalize the First Letter of the First Word and leave everything as is
2. Capitalize the First Letter of the First Word and change the rest to lower case (as there may be some upper case letter already)

The formulas used for each of these cases would be different.

Let’s see how to do this!

Capitalize the First Letter of the First Word and Leave Everything As Is

Suppose you have the below dataset and you only want to capitalize the first letter (and leave the rest as is).

Below is the formula that will do this:

The above formula uses the LEFT function to extract the first character from the string in the cell. It then uses the UPPER function to change the case of the first letter to upper. It then concatenates the rest of the string (which is extracted using the RIGHT function).

So. if there are words that already have capitalized alphabets already, these would not be changed. Only the first letter would be capitalized.

Capitalize the First Letter of the First Word and Change the Rest to Lower Case

Another scenario could be where you want to change the case of only the first letter of the first word and keep everything in lower case. This could be when you text that you want to convert to sentence case.

In this scenario, you may get some cells where the remaining text is not in the lower case already, so you will have to force the text to be converted to lower case, and then use a formula to capitalize the first letter.

Suppose you have the dataset below:

Below is the formula that will capitalize the first letter of the first word and change the rest to lower case:

Let me explain how this formula works:

• LOWER(A2) – This converts the entire text into lower case
• UPPER(LEFT(A2,1) – This converts the first letter of the text string in the cell into the upper case.
• REPLACE function is used to only replace the first character with the upper case version of it.

Capitalize First Letter Using VBA

While using formulas is a quick way to manipulate text data, it does involve a few extra steps of getting the result in an additional column and then copying and pasting it as values.

If you often need to use change the data as shown in one of the examples above, you can also consider using a VBA code. With a VBA macro code, you just have to set it once and then you can add it to the Quick Access Toolbar.

This way, the next time you need to capitalize the first letter, all you need to do is select the dataset and click the macro button in the QAT.

You can even create an add-in and use the VBA code in all your workbooks (and can even share these with your colleagues).

Now let me give you the VBA codes.

Below code will capitalize the first letter of the first word and leave everything as-is:

And below is the code that will capitalize the first letter of the text and make everything else in lower case:

You need to place this VBA code in a regular module in the VB Editor

These are some methods you can use to capitalize the first letter in Excel cells. Based on the scenario, you can choose the formula method or the VBA method.

Hope you found this Excel tutorial useful.

You may also like the following Excel tutorials:

Источник