How to Change Uppercase to Lowercase (Word, Docs, Excel)

By HSP · Published October 5, 2026 · 5 min read · Writing & Text

It happens to everyone: you type a paragraph with Caps Lock on, receive a spreadsheet of names in ALL CAPS, or copy a headline that needs proper capitalisation. Retyping is slow and error-prone. Every major writing tool has a faster way to change case, and an online converter handles styles that word processors do not, such as sentence case, camelCase and snake_case.

The fastest way: an online case converter

Paste your text into the case converter and click a button: UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case, camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, kebab-case, CONSTANT_CASE, alternating case or inverse case. Copy the result back into your document. The conversion happens in your browser, so the text is not uploaded anywhere. This is the best option when you need a style your editor does not support, or when you are working in an app with no case options at all, such as an email client or a content management system.

Microsoft Word

Keyboard shortcut

1. Select the text.
2. Press Shift + F3 (on some laptops, Fn + Shift + F3).
3. Press again to cycle through lowercase, UPPERCASE and Capitalize Each Word.

Change Case menu

On the Home tab, click the Aa (Change Case) button in the Font group. It offers Sentence case, lowercase, UPPERCASE, Capitalize Each Word and tOGGLE cASE. Toggle case is handy for fixing text typed with Caps Lock on by mistake.

Google Docs

1. Select the text.
2. Go to Format › Text › Capitalization.
3. Choose lowercase, UPPERCASE or Title Case.

Google Docs does not offer sentence case in this menu, so use the online converter for that.

Excel and Google Sheets

Spreadsheets use formulas, which is ideal for converting a whole column at once. If the original text is in A2:

Type the formula in B2, then double-click the fill handle (the small square at the bottom right of the cell) to copy it down the column. To replace the original data, copy column B and use Paste Special › Values over column A, then delete column B.

Note that PROPER capitalises the first letter after any non-letter character, so “o’neill” becomes “O’Neill” (good) but “it’s” becomes “It'S” (not good), and “macdonald” becomes “Macdonald”. Always scan the results.

Mac and other apps

On a Mac, many apps that use the standard text system, such as Pages and TextEdit, offer case options when you right-click selected text and choose Transformations (Make Upper Case, Make Lower Case, Capitalize). In code editors such as Visual Studio Code, open the Command Palette and search for “Transform to Lowercase” or “Transform to Uppercase”.

Title case is not just “capitalise every word”

Proper headline capitalisation follows a style guide, and the guides disagree on small words:

• APA style capitalises words of four letters or more and all “major” words, and lowercases minor words of three letters or fewer (short conjunctions, articles and short prepositions), unless they start the title or follow a colon.
• AP style, used by many news outlets, also capitalises words of four or more letters.
• Chicago style lowercases prepositions regardless of length, so “Walking through the Park” rather than “Walking Through the Park”.

“Capitalize Each Word” in Word and PROPER in Excel ignore these rules. For headlines, essays and reference lists, use the title case converter, which applies AP, APA, Chicago or MLA rules and keeps acronyms such as NASA intact.

Sentence case and when to use it

Sentence case capitalises only the first word and proper nouns: “How to change uppercase to lowercase in Word”. Many websites, apps and style guides now prefer it for headings and buttons because it is easier to read. Converting to sentence case automatically cannot know which words are names, so check proper nouns such as people, places and brands afterwards.

Case styles for developers

• camelCase: userFirstName (JavaScript variables)
• PascalCase: UserFirstName (class names)
• snake_case: user_first_name (Python, database columns)
• kebab-case: user-first-name (URLs, CSS classes)
• CONSTANT_CASE: USER_FIRST_NAME (constants)

For URLs specifically, the slug generator also removes accents and punctuation, giving clean addresses like “how-to-change-uppercase-to-lowercase”.

Why ALL CAPS is worth fixing

Long passages in capital letters are harder to read because words lose their distinctive shapes, and in emails and messages caps often come across as shouting. Screen readers may also read some all-caps words letter by letter, as if they were abbreviations. Use capitals sparingly for short labels or emphasis.

After fixing case, you might also want to clean up a pasted list, see how to remove duplicate lines, or check the length of your text with the word counter and our guide to how many words fit on a page.