Text function
PROPER
Give every word a capital letter.
Purpose
Put a name into title case
Returns
The same text with the first letter of each word capitalised and the rest in lower case
Syntax
=PROPER(text)
| Argument | Required | What goes here |
|---|---|---|
text | Required | The cell holding the shouted or lower-case text. |
How to use PROPER
PROPER capitalises the first letter of every word and lower-cases everything after it. A word starts after any character that is not a letter.
It is the standard fix for a supplier or customer column that arrived shouted or all in lower case from a legacy system.
It is not clever about names. Anything with internal capitals or an abbreviation comes back wrong, so it is a first pass rather than a finished answer.
Examples
Every result below is worked out by the same evaluator that marks your answers, on the sheet shown here.
| A | B | C | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reference | Supplier name | Amount | Posted |
| 2 | GL-6100-8801 | brightwell paper | 1500 | Y |
| 3 | GL-6200-8802 | calder UTILITIES | 320 | y |
| 4 | GL-6100-8803 | meridian freight ltd | 2750 | |
| 5 | GL-6300-8804 | ashgrove catering | 184 | Y |
| 6 | GL-6200-8805 | THORNBURY print | 760 | |
| 7 | GL-6100-8806 | Brightwell Paper | 1120 | Y |
| Formula | Result |
|---|---|
=PROPER(B6)THORNBURY print becomes readable. | Thornbury Print |
=PROPER(TRIM(B2))Clean the spaces, then the capitals. The pair you reach for on nearly every import. | Brightwell Paper |
=PROPER(B4)Ltd gets a capital L and nothing else, which is right here and would be wrong for a name like PLC. | Meridian Freight Ltd |
Notes
- PROPER capitalises after every non-letter, so O'Brien comes back as O'Brien and a code like GL-6100 is left alone.
- It will lower-case an abbreviation that should stay shouted. Check the column before you paste the result over the original.
Related
Practise PROPER in Unit 04
A reference tells you what it does. A unit makes you use it.