Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 21, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021
David wanted to find words with an initial capital letter and change the initial capital letter to lowercase. Using wildcards, he wrote a Find string that correctly found capitalized words. However, David was unable to figure out how to change the initial capital to lowercase. He thought of using a Replace string but didn't know how to create one that would do that.
There is no way to do this in Word, at least not using Find and Replace by itself. The closest you can achieve is to create a macro that will use Find and Replace to step through all instances of your capitalized words and individually change the case of them.
You can, however, easily change the case of those letters by following these general steps:
Figure 1. The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (12517) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Using Find and Replace to Change Text Case.
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2022-08-12 20:29:19
Fan
Brilliant!
2019-06-03 14:55:56
Susan
You just saved me so many hours of work! A couple of clicks, pressing Shift+F3 twice and all of my words are the way I need them to be. Thank you!
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