← All how-to recipes

How to change text to uppercase, lowercase, or Title Case

✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3

Standardize capitalization — ALL CAPS, all lowercase, or Capitalize Each Word.

The formula

AppFormulaNotes
Excel=PROPER(A2)UPPER(A2) = ALL CAPS; LOWER(A2) = all lowercase; PROPER(A2) = Title Case.
Google Sheets=PROPER(A2)Identical.
LibreOffice Calc=PROPER(A2)Identical.

How it works

Three functions cover every case: UPPER makes everything capital, LOWER makes it all small, and PROPER capitalizes the first letter of each word — "aDA loVELACE" becomes "Ada Lovelace". PROPER is handy for cleaning imported names but it over-capitalizes things like "McDonald" (to "Mcdonald") and words after apostrophes, so check edge cases. For sentence case (only the first letter capital), there's no built-in — combine UPPER(LEFT(...)) with LOWER(MID(...)) (see the capitalize-the-first-letter-only recipe). These change the text itself; to only display differently while keeping the original, there's no format equivalent — case must be changed by formula.

Verified, not just documented

We ran =PROPER(A2) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned Ada Lovelace — exactly the expected result. Every formula here is confirmed by actually executing it.