How to change text to uppercase or lowercase in Word

Typed a heading in the wrong case, or left Caps Lock on? There's no need to retype it. Shift+F3 changes the case of any selected text instantly.

Step by step

1. Select the text you want to change.
2. Press Shift+F3. The text changes case.
3. Keep pressing Shift+F3 to cycle through UPPERCASE, lowercase and Capitalise Each Word.

Tips & troubleshooting

• Ctrl+Shift+A applies All Caps formatting, which displays text in capitals without changing the letters themselves.
• Shift+F3 also works in PowerPoint and Outlook.

All five case options

Shift+F3 cycles through three of them. The Change Case button on the Home tab, marked Aa, has the full set.

• Sentence case: capital at the start of each sentence only.
• lowercase: every letter small.
• UPPERCASE: every letter capital.
• Capitalise Each Word: a capital at the start of every word.
• tOGGLE cASE: swaps each letter, which rescues text typed with Caps Lock on by mistake.

Things to check afterwards

• Capitalise Each Word is not title case. It capitalises of, and and the as well, so a heading may need tidying by hand.
• Names and brands lose their internal capitals. McDonald becomes Mcdonald and iPhone becomes Iphone.
• Acronyms are flattened by lowercase and Sentence case, so NHS turns into nhs.
• If your selection ends with a full stop, Shift+F3 offers Sentence case in place of Capitalise Each Word.

Changing the letters or just the look

Shift+F3 actually retypes the letters. Ctrl+Shift+A is different: it applies All Caps as a font effect, so the text displays in capitals but the original letters are kept underneath. That matters for headings controlled by a style. Set All Caps in the Heading style and you can switch every heading back later by changing one setting. Ctrl+Shift+K applies small caps in the same way.

In other apps

Shift+F3 works in PowerPoint and Outlook as well, and in Word for Mac. Excel has no change case command, because cells hold data rather than formatted text. Use a formula in a spare column instead: =UPPER(A2), =LOWER(A2) or =PROPER(A2), then paste the results back as values.