How to use PROPER function in Excel?

The PROPER function in Excel is used to capitalize the first letter of each word in a text string, and convert all other letters to lowercase. This is particularly useful for standardizing text data, such as names or titles.

Here’s how you can use the PROPER function in Excel:

     =PROPER(A1)

     =PROPER("good morning")

     =PROPER(TRIM(A1))

Basic Usage:

Suppose you have the text “hello world” in cell A1 and you want to convert it to “Hello World”.
You would enter the following formula in another cell:
This would return “Hello World”.

Multiple Words Capitalization:

The PROPER function capitalizes the first letter of each word in a string. So, for “john doe” in A1, using `=PROPER(A1)` would return “John Doe”.

Dealing with Non-Alphabetic Characters:

The PROPER function considers any character that is not a letter as a word separator. Hence, if A1 contains “john-doe” or “john_doe”, `=PROPER(A1)` will return “John-Doe” and “John_Doe”, respectively.

Example in a Formula:

You can directly type a text string into the PROPER function:
This would output “Good Morning”.

Using with Other Functions:

PROPER can be combined with other functions to clean and format data. For example, using it with TRIM to remove extra spaces:
This ensures that not only are the words properly capitalized, but also unnecessary spaces are removed.

By using the PROPER function, you can ensure that all words in a text string are neatly capitalized, which is useful for preparing data for reports and presentations.

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