How to capitalize the first letter in Excel

Active Excel users often encounter situations where it is necessary to capitalize the first letter. If there are a small number of cells, you can perform this procedure manually. However, if we are talking about editing a large table, several sheets filled with information, it is best to use the built-in features of Excel itself, which will automate the entire process.

How to replace first lowercase letter with uppercase

One of the main problems of the Excel program is the lack of a separate function for replacing selected characters from cells with others. An easy option is to do it manually, but repeating the same procedure will take too long if there are a lot of filled cells. To complete the task as quickly as possible, you need to combine built-in tools Excel among themselves.

How to capitalize the first letter of one word

To replace the first letters in only one word of a sector or range with uppercase, you need to use three functions:

1. “REPLACE” is the main function. It is needed to change a whole fragment from a cell or a single character to what will be indicated in the function argument.
2. “UPPER” is a function related to the first order. It is needed to replace lowercase letters with uppercase ones.
3. “LEFT” is a function related to the second order. With its help, you can count several characters from the designated cell.

Understanding how to complete this task will be much easier if you describe the whole process step by step. Procedure:

1. Fill the table with the required data in advance.
2. By clicking LMB, mark a free cell on the required sheet of the table.
3. In the selected cell, you must write an expression for the place where you want to replace one character with another. The expression looks like this: REPLACE(A(cell number),1,UPPER(LEFT(A(cell number),1))).
4. When the formula is prepared, you need to press the “Enter” button for the procedure to be carried out. If the expression was written correctly, a modified version of the text will appear in the selected cell separately.
5. Next, you need to hover over the changed text with the mouse cursor, move it to the lower right corner. A black cross should appear.
6. It is necessary to hold down the LMB cross, pull it down as many lines as it is in the working column.
7. After completing this action, a new column will appear, where all the lines of the working column will be indicated with the first letters changed to capital letters.

8. Next, you need to copy the received data to the place of the original information. To do this, you need to select a new column, copy it through the context menu or the line with tools in the “Home” tab.
9. Select all lines from the original column that you want to replace. Right-click, in the context menu that appears, select the second function in the “Paste Options” group, its name is “Values”.
10. If all actions are performed correctly, the values ​​in the marked cells will change to those that were obtained by the formula.
11. It remains to remove the third-party column. To do this, select all the changed cells, right-click to open the context menu, select the “Delete” function.
12. A window should appear with the option to delete cells from the table. Here you need to choose how the selected elements will be deleted – the whole column, individual rows, cells with a shift up, cells with a shift to the left.
13. To complete the deletion, click the “OK” button.

The procedure for replacing the first letters of all words with capitals

Working with tables Excel, sometimes it becomes necessary to change the first letters of all words in certain cells to uppercase. To do this, it is recommended to use the “PROPER” function. Procedure:

1. Select a blank cell in the table by right-clicking, add the original expression to it using the “Insert Function” button (located on the left side of the formula bar, denoted by “fx”).

2. A window for adding functions settings will appear in front of the user, in which you need to select “PROPER”, click the “OK” button.
3. After that, you need to fill in the function argument. In the free field, you need to write the name of the cell whose data you want to change. Press the “OK” button.

Important! For those users who know most Excel formulas by heart, it is not necessary to use the “Function Wizard”. You can enter the function into the selected cell of the table manually and add to it the coordinates of the cell whose data you want to change. Example =PROPLANCH(A2).

4. The finished result will be displayed in the cell of the table, which was marked separately from the working columns.
5. Repeat steps 5, 6, 7 from the previous method. If everything is done correctly, a new column with the changed data should appear.
6. A separate column must be selected using the RMB, the document panel or the key combination on the keyboard “CTRL + C”.
7. Select all cells from the worksheet whose data you want to replace. Paste the modified version through the “Values” function.
8. The last action before saving the result is deleting the added column from which the data was copied, as described in the first method.

Conclusion

If you correctly combine the tools available in the standard version of Excel, you can change the first letters of one or more words from the selected cells, which is many times more convenient and faster than manual entry.