Formulas > =PROPER()

How To Use PROPER() Function in Google Sheets

Description

Capitalizes each word in a specified string.

What are the common questions about the PROPER formula?
How do I capitalize only the first letter of each word in a text string? Not with Proper.
Can I exclude certain words or phrases from being capitalized? Nope
What happens if there are multiple spaces between words? Find out by trying it out.
Can I apply the PROPER formula to a range of cells instead of a single cell? Yes. by wrapping the PROPER() formula with ARRAYFORMULA()
Is there a way to capitalize only the first letter of the first word in a sentence? Not with a native formula.

How can the PROPER formula be used appropriately?
The PROPER formula can be used to standardize text by capitalizing the first letter of each word.
It can be helpful when dealing with names, titles, or any text that should follow proper capitalization rules.
The formula is useful for ensuring consistency and enhancing readability in your data.

How can the PROPER formula be commonly mistyped?
The PROPER formula should be written as "PROPER".
Common mistypes include misspelling the formula as "prper" or Propper, or PROPr

What are some common ways the PROPER formula is used inappropriately?
Using the PROPER formula on data that should not be capitalized, such as all-uppercase acronyms or abbreviations. It makes it look weird.
Applying the formula to cells that already contain properly capitalized text, leading to unnecessary changes. It just is unnecessary.

What are some common pitfalls when using the PROPER formula?
The PROPER formula does not handle exceptions or special cases automatically. For instance, words like "and", "the", or "of" are usually not capitalized in titles.
The formula does not account for names that have specific capitalization rules (e.g., "McDonald" or "O'Brien").

What are common mistakes when using the PROPER formula?
Forgetting to include the cell reference or text string within the formula, causing errors.
Not being aware that the PROPER formula is not case-sensitive, so "john doe" and "John Doe" would not be treated differently. But also you will overwrite any properly capitalized words. And you make introduce new capitalization mistakes that were not in the original text.

What are common misconceptions people might have with the PROPER formula?
Assuming that the PROPER formula can automatically differentiate between proper nouns and other words that should not be capitalized.
Expecting the PROPER formula to handle all capitalization rules for different languages, which it does not.

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Are you struggling to find a specific value in a column of data?
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How To Actually Use PROPER() in Sheets

PROPER(text_to_capitalize)

5Better Sheets Tutorials

Create a little web app, or a tool inside of Google Sheets that can take any text input and give us the correct case we want. It can do Title Case or Sentence Case. It can do UPPER and lower case as well.

I added a little apps script to it that will check only one of the options. Check out the Radio Button Apps Script in another video.
Learn to create lead magnet or sellable worksheets for your business. Included are more topic ideas so you can take this template and run with it.
How can I use this function, lower, upper, or proper as a conditional formatting? And then the other question is, how can I use this to apply on a bunch of cells without having to double the cells?
Every word can be capitalized with this formula.
There's something wrong with PROPER() the google sheets function. Let's fix it by customizing our own TitleCase() function inside of Apps Script.

Learn more about the PROPER() formula:

Capitalize Each Word in google sheets, Called Proper or Title Case or Sentence Case

This is how to make each word in sentence capitalized. It's called Title Case often, but in Google sheets it's called Proper.

How Do I Capitalize Each Word in Google Sheets?

So you want to capitalize each word in your google sheets cells. Sometimes it's called Proper or Title Case or Sentence Case. We have lots of options but only one formula does it in Google Sheets. That is PROPER().

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