Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Changing Text Case.

Changing Text Case

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 30, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021


6

You've probably had it happen to you: You get a document from the new temp down the hall (or the technically illiterate mid-level manager), and you need to get it ready for a presentation in ten minutes. When you open the document you see that EVERYTHING IN THE DOCUMENT IS SCREAMING AT YOU. All the text is in capital letters. Aaagghhh! You can't distribute the document in this format. Quick—what do you do?

Fortunately, Word allows you to quickly and easily change the capitalization (case) of text. All you need to do is follow these steps:

  1. Select the text you want to alter.
  2. Press Shift+F3. Word changes the case of the selected text.
  3. Continue pressing Shift+F3 until the case is the way you want it.

Using the Shift+F3 method allows you to cycle through three different case scenarios: ALL CAPS, all lowercase, and All Title Case. If you need greater control, then you need to use the tools on the ribbon. Start by selecting your text and then displaying the Home tab of the ribbon. Click the Change Case tool in the Font group and Word displays a drop-down list from which you can select how you want the case of the selected text affected:

  • Sentence Case. This option capitalizes the first letter of each sentence in the selection.
  • Lowercase. This option makes all the selected text lowercase.
  • Uppercase. This option capitalizes each letter in the selection.
  • Title Case. This option capitalizes the first letter of each word in the selection.
  • Toggle Case. This option switches the case of each letter in the selection: lowercase becomes uppercase and vice-versa.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11239) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, Word in Microsoft 365, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Changing Text Case.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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Comments

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What is 2 + 8?

2024-01-30 06:48:52

Ken Endacott

When editing a document with Track Changes on, changing case using Shift + F3 does not raise a Track Change entry. Furthermore manually changing a character in a word marks the the entire word as changed and it is not obvious which character has changed. What is desirable is to mark just the character that has been changed.

The macro TitleCase below will select a whole sentence and make the first letter of each word upper case if not already upper case and mark only the changed character in Track Changes. Similar macros can be used to give title, upper and lower cases.

Sub TitleCase()
Dim txt As Range
Dim ww As Range
Dim cs As String
Dim cr As Range
Dim j As Long
Dim testWrd As String
Dim ExcludeWrd
ExcludeWrd = Array("this", "at", "that", "and", "with", "by", "to", "the", "for", _
"as", "of", "from", "or", "in", "a", "an", "on", " ")
Set txt = Selection.Range.Sentences(1)
For Each ww In txt.Words
testWrd = Trim(ww.Text)
For j = 0 To UBound(ExcludeWrd)
If ExcludeWrd(j) = testWrd Then GoTo nxtww
Next j
cs = Left(ww.Text, 1)
If cs >= "a" And cs <= "z" Then
Set cr = ww.Duplicate
cr.End = cr.Start
cr.Select
Selection.TypeText UCase(cs)
Selection.Delete Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
End If
nxtww:
Next ww
End Sub


2024-01-30 01:56:37

Tomek the Mad Scientist

@Barry:
Behaviour of Shift+F3 cycling through cases sometimes varies, depending on what is selected. What you observed usually happens when the selected text contains end-of-sentence punctuation (period, exclamation mark, or question mark) followed by white space (space, tab, paragraph mark, etc). In such situation the cycling is: (selected text)->ALL CAPS -> all lowercase -> Sentence case -> ALL CAPS ...
The sentence case capitalizes the first letter of of the first word in the selection only if it is the first word in a sentence. If you select test starting in the middle of a sentence, the first selected letter will remain lowercase, but first letters of the following sentences selected will be capitalized.

The cycling sequence described in the tip happens when the selected text does not include end-of-sentence punctuation followed by white space. Interestingly, decimal numbers (no space directly after decimal point) or text like URL addresses, do not trigger the behaviour you observed. On the other hand, some abbreviations (for example Dr. No) may do just that.

Using Change Case tool described in the tip gives you more control, but even then you may get weird results like: vIDEO pROVIDES a pOWERFUL wAY tO hELP yOU pROVE yOUR pOINT.


2024-01-27 09:46:15

Barry

Hi. It is a very rare event that I find any sort of error/mis-guidance in Word.Tips. However I think I am right with the following observation:
you say...
...cycle through three different case scenarios: ALL CAPS, all lowercase, and All Title Case. From my limited experience I think the All Title Case should be All sentence case (only capitalizes the first character of each sentence. Not the first character of each word).


2024-01-02 10:24:13

Steven Van Steenhuyse

Great tip. My question is with Title Case. Generally, short words like "the," "and," "or," etc. in a title are not capitalized. Is there a way to quickly change the case in a title while keeping those short words in lowercase? Perhaps a macro can do this?


2024-01-02 10:16:34

Andrew

Tomek, I think only with a macro, which is easy (ish) to program, but a little tricky (e.g., some words are not capitalized, but they at the beginning of a title. Is the selection at the beginning of the "title"? And sometimes these words are still capitalized, e.g., after punctuation (e.g., a colon in a title). And then there's the matter of deciding on which words are not to be capitalized. So I still do what I presume you do - I use the Word function to capitalize all of the words, and then I adjust on the fly.


2023-12-30 16:52:21

Tomek

Is there a way to get the true
Title Case with Some of the Words not Capitalized?


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