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:
-
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.
-
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 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.
-
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.
-
.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.
-
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
-
To undo the case change, press ⌘ + Z .
-
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.
-
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.
-
Select the text you want to change.
-
Go to Home > More Font Options > Change case.
-
Choose the case you want to use.
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.
3 Ways to Change or Convert Case in Microsoft Word Documents (with Shortcuts)
by Avantix Learning Team | Updated August 1, 2022
Applies to: Microsoft® Word® 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 or 365 (Windows)
You can change case in Microsoft Word documents by changing character formatting or by converting case. If you want to be able to easily change case (like removing All Caps), it’s best to change case by applying formatting such as All Caps or Small Caps. Alternatively, you use the Change Case command to convert case. This command offers a series of options including upper, lower, capitalize each word and sentence case. You can also use a keyboard shortcut to move through different case options.
Recommended article: How to Create a Table of Contents in Word
Do you want to learn more about Microsoft Word? Check out our virtual classroom or in-person classroom Word courses >
Change Case using the Font dialog box (apply or remove All Caps or Small Caps)
To apply All Caps or Small Caps to text as a format using the Font dialog box:
- Select the text.
- Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
- Click the dialog box launcher on the bottom right of the Font group. Alternatively, press Ctrl + D. The Font dialog box appears.
- Select All Caps or Small Caps.
- Click OK.
The Font dialog box appears as follows:
This is usually the best way to apply All Caps since it’s a format and can be removed using the Font dialog box. You can also build this format into styles.
Change case using the Change Case command in the Ribbon
If text has been formatted with hard capitals where the user has pressed the Caps Lock key when typing text, you can remove or change the capitalization using the Change Case command. You can convert a selection typed in upper case to title case, lower case or even sentence case.
To change case using the Change Case command in the Ribbon:
- Select the text.
- Click the Home tab in the Ribbon.
- Click Change Case in the Font group (Aa). A drop-down menu appears.
- Select the desired case.
The Change Case drop-down menu appears as follows:
The following options appear in the Change Case drop-down menu:
- Sentence case – capitalizes the first letter of a sentence. If there are multiple sentences, Word will capitalize the next word after a period.
- Lowercase – removes all capitalization.
- UPPERCASE – capitalizes all letters in the selection.
- Capitalize Each Word – capitalizes each word in the selection (often called title case).
- tOGGLE cASE – shifts between two cases. For example, if the first letter of each word in the selection was capitalized, this command would switch to the opposite formatting with the first letter of each word as lower case and the other letters in upper case.
Change case using keyboard shortcuts
You can use keyboard shortcuts to move between several of the options in the Change Case drop-down menu:
- Select the text.
- Press Shift + F3. Keep pressing Shift + F3 to move between UPPERCASE, lowercase and Capitalize Each Word.
Some users may need to press the Fn key as well to activate the F3 key.
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4 April 2022
Change Case options in Word, like many Word features goes beyond the obvious choices from the basic shortcut. There’s up to five choices on the ribbon with a keyboard shortcut to reach it.
Alter the upper/lower case of words, phrases or more. ‘change case’ can become ‘Change Case’ or ‘CHANGE CASE’ or even “cHANGE cASE” without retyping.
There are four ways to change the case of existing text in Word:
- Keyboard shortcut
- Change Case button on the Ribbon
- Alt shortcut to reach the ribbon menu.
- The Font dialog box
- Replace text – good when there’s many words or phrases to change.
Keyboard shortcut – Shift + F3
To change text using only the keyboard, highlight the selected text, hold down the Shift key and press F3. This option will toggle around three different case options:
- All uppercase
- All lowercase
- Sentence case (first letter of each sentence is uppercase and the rest lowercase)
Using the ribbon
Another way to change the case of text is to select the text that you want to change and click the Change Case button on the Font group of the Home tab on the Ribbon.
When you click the button, a dropdown menu will appear showing different options for you to choose. There are two more choices here than using Shift + F3.
- Sentence case – The first letter of each sentence in the selected text is capitalized and the rest will be lowercase. Just like these two sentences!
- Lowercase – all text will forced to lowercase.
- Uppercase – all the selected text goes to UPPER case.
- Capitalize each word – the first letter of each word will be uppercase, and the rest lowercase.
- Toggle – reverse the case. Uppercase letters become lowercase, and all lowercase letters are changed to uppercase.
Alt key sequence for Change Case
The mouse-free to reach the Change Case menu is:
Alt , H, 7 which reaches the Change Case menu list. Press S L U C or T to choose the Change Case option you want.
Using the Font Dialog Box
There are two lesser known change case options hiding under the Home | Font part of the ribbon.
The Font dialog box is under the arrow in the bottom right corner of the Font group of the Home tab on the Ribbon.
We’ve talked about those little icons many times at Office-Watch.com. Always look for them on the ribbon and click to discover a lot more choices than the basic Office ribbon offerings
There are two options for capitalization on the Font dialog box.
- Small caps – All letters will be capitalized, but letters that were already lowercase will be slightly smaller, as shown below.
- All caps – All letters will be capitalized, the same as if UPPERCASE was selected using the method described above.
These two ‘Caps’ options are different from regular Change Case choices. They change the look of the letters but don’t change the underlying Upper/lower case of the letters. Confused? It’s a bit like strikethough or superscript formatting which changes the appearance in the document, but the underlying letters haven’t changed.
NOTE: Small caps in the Font dialog box can be used in conjunction with the other two methods for changing case. Letters that would be uppercase using the other options will be slightly larger than letters that would be lowercase using the other options.
Formatting Magic with Word has a lot more tips about fonts and text formatting.
Four more vertical formatting tricks in Word
Word tables for formatting magic
All your Clear Formatting options for Microsoft Word
Make a Word text box with rounded corners
Do you ever wonder how to change the text case after you have typed? By default Office applications like Word uses the sentence case for writing with first letter as capital. However, you can easily change the text case in all Office applications. In this article, we will explain how to do that using builtin option as well as with other tools.
Related: How to insert dividers in Word quickly?
Default Text Case Usage
Word, PowerPoint and Outlook apps will use the backstage AutoFormat and AutoCorrect settings to correct the text cases.
- For example, launch Word and go to “File >
Options” menu. - Click on the “AutoCorrect Options…” button under
the “Proofing” section. - You can change the options under AutoFormat,
AutoCorrect and AutoFormat As You Type tabs.
Some of the useful options are to capitalize the first
letter of the sentence and correct accidental usage of capital letters.
Manually Changing Text Cases
The auto correct and auto formatting will not help to convert already written sentences to different cases. Let us say, someone sent you an email with Word attachment containing content with all capital letters. If you are embarrassed to read with capital cases, you can simply convert the content into readable sentences case with few clicks.
Change Text Case in Word
Word has many options for changing text cases compared to
other Office applications.
- Open your document and select the text you want
to convert the case. - Under the “Home” tab, click on the “Change Case”
icon showing as Aa. - It will show the dropdown and allow you to
change cases in different manner.
Explanation of Different Text Cases
- Sentence case – this will change the first letter of all sentences to capital and leave other cases in small. This is a default case used in general for writing text content.
- Lowercase – convert all letters to small case letters.
- Uppercase – convert all letters to upper case letters.
- Capitalize each word – only capitalizes the first letter in each word of the selected text.
- Half-width – convert the text width to half, generally not applicable for many of the standard fonts.
- Full-width – convert the text into a full-width font style by justifying the content to full-width.
Related: How to create eBook from Word document?
Typing with Small Caps and All Caps
In addition to the above text cases, you can also type the
text in small caps or all caps (all uppercase) from the font settings dialog.
- Select the text and press “Control + D”. Alternatively,
you can click on the small arrow in the “Font” group under “Home” tab. - This will open Font dialog where you can check “Small
caps” option and click ‘OK”. - Now, you can type with small caps.
- Similarly, you can check “All caps” to start
typing in capital letters. However, you can simply do this by turning on the
Caps Lock key on your keyboard.
There are few problems in using this method:
- You manually need to disable the check boxes
again to go back to normal typing mode. - You cannot convert small caps text into any
other format.
Example with Different Text Cases
Below is an example of different text cases in Word:
| Sample Sentence | Type |
| This is a sentence with sentence case. | Sentence case |
| this is a sentence with all lowercase. | Lowercase |
| THIS IS A SENTENCE WITH ALL UPPERCASE. | Uppercase |
| This Sentence Is Capitalized With Each Word. | Capitalize each word |
| tHIS IS an EXAmPLE OF UsING TOgGLE CAsE SENTENCE. | Toggle case |
| This is a half-width sentence. | Half-width |
| Ｔｈｉｓ ｉｓ ａ ｆｕｌｌ－ｗｉｄｔｈ ｓｅｎｔｅｎｃｅ． | Full-width |
| HERE IS AN ALL SMALL CAPS SENTENCE. | Small caps |
| HERE IS AN ALL CAPS SENTENCE. | All caps |
Keyboard shortcut: You can select the text and press “Shift + F3” to toggle the text case between upper, lower and capitalize each word options.
Change Text Case in Outlook
In outlook, you cannot change the case when reading the emails
as it will be in a read mode. However, you can change the text case in
following ways:
- When creating a new email or calendar entry.
- By replying to the email and change the case.
Go to “Format Text” menu and click on the “Change Case” icon. You will have similar options like Word to change the text.
If you the option is greyed out then click on the HTML or Rich Text option in the beside “Format” group.
Change Text Case in PowerPoint
PowerPoint also has similar option like Word. When you are in the textbox, go to “Home” menu and click on the “Change Case” icon to select the option from the dropdown. However, we do not see half and full-width options in PowerPoint.
Change Text Case in Excel
Excel is completely a different application, as it is not meant for word processing. However, you can use predefined functions to change the text case.
- Proper(text) – converts the text by capitalizing
each word. - Upper(text) – converts the text into uppercase.
- Lower(text) – converts the text into lowercase.
You should refer the original cell value in one of the above
functions to convert them accordingly. For example, below is the screenshot
from Excel converting the cell values B2, B3 and B4 to proper, upper and lower
case respectively.
Text case changing also works on Office 365 in Mac as explained above.
Different Language Other than English
Now that you may have one question – what happens when using different language other than English? As far as we have checked, nothing happens, as most of the languages do not have upper and lower cases separately.
Text Case Changer Tool
If you have lot of text content to change the case online then try our free text case changer tool. Simply, copy paste the text and select the option to convert.
The above tool also helps you to count the number of words and characters in a document. It will dynamically count and show the result when you enter text in the input box.