How to capitalize only the first letter (sentence case)
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)Make text start with one capital letter without capitalizing every word.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =UPPER(LEFT(A2,1))&LOWER(MID(A2,2,LEN(A2))) | PROPER capitalizes EVERY word — this does just the first character. |
| Google Sheets | =UPPER(LEFT(A2,1))&LOWER(MID(A2,2,LEN(A2))) | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =UPPER(LEFT(A2,1))&LOWER(MID(A2,2,LEN(A2))) | Identical. |
How it works
Take the first character uppercased, then everything from position 2 lowercased, and join them: "hELLO world" becomes "Hello world". This is what people usually want when they reach for PROPER and get "Hello World" instead. Drop the LOWER wrapper if the rest of the text should keep its existing casing (acronyms, names): =UPPER(LEFT(A2,1))&MID(A2,2,LEN(A2)).
Verified, not just documented
We ran =UPPER(LEFT(A2,1))&LOWER(MID(A2,2,LEN(A2))) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned Hello world — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned Hello world for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.
Functions used
UPPER · LEFT · LOWER · MID · LEN — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.
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