Excel 2007 includes several functions that enable you to perform operations on text entries in a worksheet. These functions are located in the Text category on the Formulas tab of the Ribbon and in the Insert Function dialog box.
Text functions include two types of functions: functions such as VALUE and TEXT that convert numeric text entries into numbers and numeric entries into text, and functions such as UPPER, LOWER, and PROPER that modify text.
You may need to use the text functions when you work with data imported from other programs or inherited spreadsheets. It is a good idea to tidy data as much as possible, for clarity’s sake. If the data is all typed in capitals then you could use Excel’s PROPER function to convert the entries so that only the initial letter of each word is in uppercase.
Text functions like the UPPER, LOWER, and PROPER functions all take a single text argument that indicates the text that should be modified.
- The UPPER function converts all letters in the text argument to uppercase.
- The LOWER function converts all letters in the text argument to lowercase.
- The PROPER function capitalizes the first letter of each word as well as any other letters in the text argument that don’t follow another letter, and changes all other letters in the text argument to lowercase.
For example, the following worksheet could make good use of PROPER function to convert the uppercase names to the proper case. Enter the following function in cell C2:
=PROPER(A2)
This function would display the result Jones rather than JONES in cell C3. Then use the Fill handle to copy the function down the range and to the next column, so that all items in columns A and B are converted to the proper case.
Easy.
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