PROPER capitalizes the first letter of every word in a text string and lowercases the rest — useful for cleaning up names.
PROPER takes a text string and capitalizes the first letter of each word, converting everything else to lowercase — turning "JOHN smith" or "john SMITH" into "John Smith".
It is most often used to clean up names, addresses, or titles that were typed inconsistently or imported from a system that stores everything in one case.
=PROPER(text)| Argument | Description |
|---|---|
| text required | The text to convert, or a reference to a cell containing it. |
=PROPER(A2)If A2 contains "JOHN smith", this returns "John Smith".
=PROPER(TRIM(A2))Combining with TRIM first removes extra spaces before capitalizing, handling two common data-cleaning problems at once.
=PROPER("123 MAIN STREET")Returns "123 Main Street".
PROPER will capitalize "Llc" instead of keeping "LLC" — it treats every word the same way, with no awareness of acronyms.
PROPER generally handles "O'Brien" and "Smith-Jones" correctly, capitalizing after the punctuation too, but always double-check unusual names.
ExcelPro has hands-on PROPER exercises built into real job scenarios — free to start.
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