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!
Capitalize First Letter Using Formula
There can be two scenarios where you want to capitalize:
- The first letter of each word
- 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:
=PROPER(A2)
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:
- Capitalize the First Letter of the First Word and leave everything as is
- 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:
=UPPER(LEFT(A2,1))&RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-1)
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:
=REPLACE(LOWER(A2),1,1,UPPER(LEFT(A2,1)))
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:
Sub CapitalizeFirstLetter()
Dim Sel As Range
Set Sel = Selection
For Each cell In Sel
cell.Value = UCase(Left(cell.Value, 1)) & Right(cell.Value, Len(cell.Value) - 1)
Next cell
End Sub And below is the code that will capitalize the first letter of the text and make everything else in lower case:
Sub CapitalizeFirstLetter()
Dim Sel As Range
Set Sel = Selection
For Each cell In Sel
cell.Value = Application.WorksheetFunction.Replace(LCase(cell.Value), 1, 1, UCase(Left(cell.Value, 1)))
Next cell
End Sub 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.
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