How to Change Uppercase to Lowercase in Word, Excel and Google Docs

The short answer

You never need to retype text that came out in capitals. In Word, select the text and press Shift+F3, or use Home > Change Case and pick lowercase or Sentence case. In Excel, use a helper column with =LOWER(A2), =UPPER(A2) or =PROPER(A2), then paste the results back as values. In Google Docs, use Format > Text > Capitalization. For text anywhere else (an email, a form, a chat), paste it into the Case Converter, click lower case or UPPER CASE, and copy the result.

Microsoft Word

Word has a dedicated button, documented in Microsoft's support article on changing the capitalization of text.

Using the button:

Select the text you want to change.

On the Home tab, click Change Case (the "Aa" button in the Font group).

Choose one of the options:

Option	What it does	Example
Sentence case.	Capital at the start of each sentence	The meeting is at noon.
lowercase	Every letter small	the meeting is at noon.
UPPERCASE	Every letter capital	THE MEETING IS AT NOON.
Capitalize Each Word	First letter of each word capital	The Meeting Is At Noon.
tOGGLE cASE	Swaps capitals and small letters	tHE mEETING iS aT nOON.

Toggle case is the fix for the classic caps lock accident, where you typed "hELLO" with caps lock on and pressed Shift for the first letter.

Using the keyboard: select the text and press Shift+F3. Each press cycles between lowercase, UPPERCASE and Capitalize Each Word. Keep pressing until you see the one you want. On many laptops the F keys control brightness or volume by default, so you may need to hold the Fn key as well.

Word's Sentence case only knows where sentences start. Names and places that were in capitals become lower case too, so read the result and fix proper nouns such as "India" or "Monday" by hand.

Microsoft Excel

Excel has no Change Case button. Instead, it has three text functions, which Microsoft describes in its article on changing the case of text:

• =UPPER(A2) turns "priya sharma" into "PRIYA SHARMA".
• =LOWER(A2) turns "PRIYA SHARMA" into "priya sharma".
• =PROPER(A2) turns "PRIYA SHARMA" into "Priya Sharma".

Because a formula cannot change the cell it reads from, you use a temporary column:

Insert an empty column next to the column with the text, say column B next to column A.

In B2, type =PROPER(A2) (or LOWER or UPPER) and press Enter.

Double-click the small square at the bottom-right corner of B2 to fill the formula down the column.

Select the results in column B and copy them (Ctrl+C).

Right-click A2, choose Paste Special or the paste options, and paste Values.

Delete the helper column.

Step 5 matters: if you paste normally, you paste formulas that point at the old text, and deleting the helper column then breaks them.

Watch out with PROPER: it capitalises the letter after any non-letter. Names like "o'brien" become "O'Brien", which is usually right, but "e-mail" becomes "E-Mail" and "3rd" can come out as "3Rd". Scan the results.

Google Sheets has the same three functions (UPPER, LOWER and PROPER), and the same helper-column method works there.

Google Docs

Select the text.

Open Format > Text > Capitalization.

Choose lowercase, UPPERCASE or Title Case.

Google Docs does not offer sentence case in this menu. To turn a paragraph typed in capitals into normal sentences, choose lowercase first, then capitalise the first letter of each sentence and any names yourself.

Anywhere else: the online Case Converter

For text in an email, a web form, a PDF you copied from, or a phone note, the Case Converter is quicker than opening a document:

Paste your text into the box.

Click lower case or UPPER CASE.

Click Copy result and paste it where you need it.

The conversion happens on the page as you click, so you can switch between buttons to compare. The tool also has naming styles for code, such as camelCase, snake_case and kebab-case; those are explained in camelCase vs snake_case vs kebab-case.

Which method should you use?

Where the text is	Best method	Keeps formatting?
A Word document	Shift+F3 or Change Case	Yes
A column of names in Excel	LOWER, UPPER or PROPER plus Paste Values	Cell formats stay; text becomes values
A Google Doc	Format > Text > Capitalization	Yes
An email, form or chat	Online Case Converter	Plain text only

If the text has bold, links or other formatting you want to keep, change it inside the app where it lives. Copying it out to an online tool and back gives you plain text.

Fixing text that was typed with caps lock on

If every letter is in capitals, convert to lowercase, then fix the first letter of each sentence and names. In Word, Sentence case does most of this in one step.

If the letters are inverted ("hELLO wORLD"), use Word's tOGGLE cASE, or the InVeRsE button in the Case Converter, which swaps every letter.

For a list of names, use PROPER in Excel or Google Sheets, then check names with unusual capitals such as "McDonald" or "D'Souza".

Common mistakes

• Using UPPER CASE for long passages. Text in all capitals is harder to read; keep it for short headings or codes.
• Trusting Title Case blindly. Automatic title case capitalises every word, including "and", "of" and "the". Style guides usually keep those small unless they start the title, so fix them by hand.
• Forgetting to paste values in Excel. Deleting the helper column then turns your converted text into errors.
• Converting text that must stay exact. Passwords, product codes, file names on some systems and case-sensitive IDs can stop working if you change their case.

For counting the characters in your corrected text before pasting it into a form, use the Word Counter.