{"id":4306,"date":"2016-09-06T21:39:37","date_gmt":"2016-09-06T19:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/?p=4306"},"modified":"2023-11-30T21:19:01","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T20:19:01","slug":"cleaning-data-with-excel-proper-formula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/blog\/cleaning-data-with-excel-proper-formula\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning Data with Excel&#8217;s PROPER Formula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>What does it do?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Capitalizes the first letter in a text string and any other letters in the text that follow a space.\u00a0Converts all other letters to lowercase letters.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Formula breakdown:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>=PROPER(<span style=\"color: #ff0000\"><span style=\"color: #339966\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">text<\/span><\/span><\/span>)<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>What it means:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>=PROPER(<span style=\"color: #0000ff\">this text cell<\/span>)<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>There are times when you will need to only <a href=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/blog\/capitalize-first-letter-in-excel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CAPITALIZE\u00a0the first letter<\/a> in each word. \u00a0The most common scenario would be when you receive data with employee names, countries or cities that are all in lower or uppercase.<\/p>\n<p>The <b>PROPER\u00a0<\/b>formula in Excel can help you\u00a0format the text very very easily&#8230;goodbye manual adjustments!<\/p>\n<p>In our example below, we have a list of names in capital letters. \u00a0However we want to show the\u00a0capital letters only on the first letter of each word.<\/p>\n<p>I explain how you can do this and please\u00a0go to the bottom of the page to see the animated gif tutorial:<\/p>\n<div class=\"after-post-box\">\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ELkrpSHPy2k?rel=0 \" width=\"800\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"width: 0px;overflow: hidden;line-height: 0\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/MyExcelOnlinecomtutorials?sub_confirmation=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignmiddle wp-image-111468 size-full\" style=\"vertical-align: middle\" src=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/1.yt_.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"line-two\"><a class=\"IRPP_minimalist icon-download button small\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper.xlsx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-leadbox=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper.xlsx\" data-leadbox-id=\"147284833f72a2:12f08263ab46dc\"><span class=\"ctaText px-3 text-capitalize\"> download excel workbook <i class=\"fa fa-download\"><\/i><\/span><span class=\"postTitle px-3\">Proper.xlsx<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000\"><strong>STEP 1:<\/strong> <\/span>We need to <strong>enter the <i>Proper\u00a0<\/i>function <\/strong>next to the cell that we want to\u00a0clean\u00a0the data from:<\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_57_1 counter-flat ez-toc-counter ez-toc-transparent ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title \" >Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li><a href=\"#\" class=\"scroll-to-download\">Free Practice Workbook<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/blog\/cleaning-data-with-excel-proper-formula\/#PROPER\" title=\"=PROPER\">=PROPER<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/blog\/cleaning-data-with-excel-proper-formula\/#text\" title=\"text\">text<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"PROPER\"><\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">=PROPER<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000\"><strong>STEP 2:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0The Proper\u00a0arguments:<\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"text\"><\/span><em><strong><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">text<\/span><\/strong><\/em><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Which text do we want to change?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Reference the cell that contains the text string:<\/em><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">=PROPER<\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff\">(C10)<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-01.png\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Cleaning Data with Excel&#039;s PROPER Formula\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4308\" src=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-01.png\" alt=\"Cleaning Data with Excel&#039;s PROPER Formula\" width=\"482\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-01.png 482w, https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-01-300x129.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 482px) 100vw, 482px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000\"><strong>STEP 3:<\/strong> <\/span>Do the same for the rest of the cells by dragging the <b>PROPER\u00a0<\/b>formula all the way down using the left mouse button.<\/p>\n<p>Note that all of the names are now properly formatted:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-02.png\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Cleaning Data with Excel&#039;s PROPER Formula\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4309\" src=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-02.png\" alt=\"Cleaning Data with Excel&#039;s PROPER Formula\" width=\"480\" height=\"209\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-02.png 480w, https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Proper-02-300x131.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; What does it do? Capitalizes the first letter in a text string and any other letters in the text that follow a space.\u00a0Converts all other letters to lowercase letters. Formula breakdown: =PROPER(text) What it means: =PROPER(this text cell) There are times when you will need to only CAPITALIZE\u00a0the first letter in each word. \u00a0The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cos_headline_score":0,"cos_seo_score":0,"cos_headline_text":"Cleaning Data with Excel's PROPER Formula","cos_headline_has_been_analyzed":false,"cos_last_analyzed_headline":[],"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[3,303,14],"tags":[142,171,70],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myexcelonline.com\/meo-staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}