This i
s part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.
Sometimes you really want to change a sentence from, maybe, all lower case to All Title Case, or ALL CAPITALS to all lower case, or some other variant.
And you know how to do it, right: delete the sentence and retype it, or delete the first letter of each word and retype it, or turn on overtype then forget to turn it back to insert when you’ve finished … well, there is a way to just do it with a couple of keystrokes!
How do I change all small letters to all capitals or all capitals to all lower case letters?
This is such a simple one. Highlight your sentence (1). With the sentence still highlighted, press shift and F3 at the same time. Magic! With each press of shift-F3 it will cycle through Title Case (2), UPPER CASE (3) and then back to lower case (4).
This is so useful if you’re grappling with a bibliography you’ve written or you’re editing (especially when the capitalisation in article or book titles is not consistent), or if you accidentally type something all in capitals.
Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!
Find all the short cuts here …
LibroEditing proofreading, editing, transcription, localisation 
Chrys
May 9, 2012 at 9:56 am
All these years of using Word & I didn’t know this trick – thanks Liz. I don’t suppose you know a shortcut for transposing two characters….my typing fingers get ahead of my brain & I often find I’ve got the right characters in the wrong order!
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Liz at Libro
May 9, 2012 at 9:59 am
It’s a good one, isn’t it! I use it all the time!
Re the transposing thing – if you do it often for a particular word, you could set up an AutoCorrect for it. The only other way is to write a macro, apparently, and then assign the macro to a short cut key. I need to find out more about macros then write about those …
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aBimBola
November 4, 2013 at 8:20 pm
tenks… it helped
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Mohib
February 7, 2014 at 7:41 am
How do i convert uppercase to lower case or vise versa in normal chat or anywhere else? (not in word or excel)
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Liz at Libro
February 7, 2014 at 8:35 am
Thanks for your question. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s possible, as outside of Word / Excel etc., the Ctrl key initiates other shortcuts or commands than this text-based one. If anyone knows better, I hope they’ll chime in, but a quick search only revealed how to do this in specific coding situations.
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Daniele Catalanotto (@danielec)
October 24, 2015 at 8:53 am
If you are on a mac you could pass via an app like this one: http://www.daniele.catalanotto.ch/lowly. Made it myself because I hade the same issue.
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Liz Dexter
October 24, 2015 at 10:21 am
Thank you, that is helpful!
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oxalis
August 6, 2014 at 9:40 pm
Does not work with my Mac Word 2012 with Mavericks.
I’m dying to find a shortcut other than the Ribbon for TitleCase – macro, toolbar icon, keystrokes, whatever.
Anybody got any ideas?
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Liz at Libro
August 7, 2014 at 7:20 am
Thanks for your comment – I am clear on all of my Word posts that they were written for PC and might not work for Mac. I can only find any reference to using the Ribbon – so hopefully someone will come along who knows better, but that’s the only way I can find.
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Habeeb
January 28, 2015 at 3:30 pm
thanks a lot…very useful..
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I(sabell
March 6, 2015 at 8:37 pm
I just tired the method of reversing my letters from cap to uncapping and it work this will save me 45 minutes of retyping my document Thank you so much
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Liz Dexter
March 7, 2015 at 12:33 pm
Glad to be able to help and save you time!
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Steve
July 16, 2015 at 10:55 pm
And I also didn’t know. Thanks a lot I can now breathe
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balkrishan
December 3, 2015 at 4:39 am
i do not get satisfied
because it is not working .when I use SIFT+f3 no result appears
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Liz Dexter
December 7, 2015 at 10:13 am
Thank you for your comment. Can you please confirm whether you’re using a PC or Mac and also what program you were using this in – Word or something else. Did you highlight the text and press Shift + F3 at the same time? Having said that, sometimes unfortunately it doesn’t work, especially if text is already heavily formatted.
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praneeth
December 18, 2015 at 8:14 am
I want all words in small letters in me word what can I do?
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Liz Dexter
December 18, 2015 at 1:06 pm
If you follow the instructions in this blog post, you can change your text to lower case / small letters. Highlight the text you want to change, press the function key until you can see the text in the correct case.
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Rishi
January 8, 2016 at 3:29 am
Hi Liz,
Shift +F3 is good option to case the change but there certain abbreviations which need to be Upper case within the paragraph, is there a way word highlight all the case errors and user can change whichever need correction. Or is there a tool/website exist which helps with the same.
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Liz Dexter
January 8, 2016 at 5:50 am
If you hold the Ctrl key down, you can highlight several sections of text using the mouse, leaving out anything where you don’t want to change the case. Once you’ve got the text you want to change highlighted, use Shift-F3 to change the case as normal, and only the highlighted text will change.
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Douglas Martin
April 6, 2016 at 10:09 am
Liz
After years of finding I had typed in capitals then when I check the screen I find my mistake and have to re-type the text in normal text you…………….. have saved me time and most of all frustration. Unfortunately I can’t grab back the wasted minutes / hours, but ho, hum!
Thank you.
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Laurie Cohebn
May 23, 2016 at 12:59 pm
I have a Surface Pro 3 and am using Windows 8. Shift +F3 doesn’t work to change case. Any suggestions?
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Liz Dexter
May 23, 2016 at 1:15 pm
Thank you for your question – I’m afraid I have no experience with Surface Pros (or, indeed, Windows 8). I’ve had a search around and I can’t easily find an answer, either. I will leave your question here in the comments in case anyone else can help.
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Julie Harrison
June 23, 2016 at 4:14 pm
Shift F3 no longer works on my new Dell laptop. I am SO disappointed!! Any ideas
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Liz Dexter
June 25, 2016 at 11:37 am
Which version of Windows are you running on it?
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dapacha
July 28, 2016 at 5:16 pm
I have the same problem as Julie Harrison. Dell laptop running Windows 10 Pro and using MS Word 2016. I really miss the Shift+F3 shortcut for Initial Cap/All Cap/No Cap. On this Dell laptop Shift+F3 changes the audio volume. 😦
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Liz Dexter
July 28, 2016 at 5:23 pm
Oh, that’s really annoying. I wonder if it’s a Dell issue, and if you can change the audio volume stuff to another shortcut. Might be worth looking into it as it’s two Dells you have.
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xclusiveyou
September 24, 2016 at 6:12 pm
thank you so much.. a God send!! Hope you are doing well on all of your endeavors.
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IFEANYI
April 26, 2017 at 1:40 pm
THANK YOU.
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Murray Tenace
January 6, 2018 at 8:56 am
It’s on my phone and it won’t let me go back to lower case
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Liz Dexter
January 6, 2018 at 1:14 pm
I’m afraid I can’t comment on (presumably Word on) your phone apps as that’s not an area I’m familiar with and it will depend on the operating system etc., sorry!
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tim douglas
April 28, 2019 at 1:51 pm
This worked for me in WordPad (-Windows 10 on a Dell desktop) I’m very pleased to say! (always typing without looking and accidentally putting caps lock on !)So copy text out of face book to WordPad , correct and paste back- Bingo ! Thanks so much for the tip !
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Liz Dexter
April 28, 2019 at 9:29 pm
Glad I could help!
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Anderwriter
July 22, 2022 at 10:34 pm
Thanks—this is very useful! It works fine for me, at least, with Word 2003 (Microsoft’s last version before the ill-advised “ribbon” interface) under Windows 10. Re your introductory statement, though:
> This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts”…
Hang on—isn’t a “short cut” (no space needed, BTW) what this page is all about? Were you just seeing if we were paying attention?
Also, I just thought I’d mention that, in my personal collection of shortcut notes, I’ve listed this one thus:
UPPER/lower/Title Case: Shift+F3
Clever, eh? Using actual examples of each case? I thought you’d like that. Okay, I live in a small town and have had too much coffee, but still. Cheers, A.
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Liz Dexter
July 23, 2022 at 2:23 pm
I can confirm it still works in Word 2010, Word 2016 and the subscription version that comes with Microsoft 365. As to my comment that it avoids time-consuming “short cuts”, the clue lies in the inverted commas: people think they have short cuts which they might have used for years, but these are the ones I use which do actually cut some time out. Ad yes, that’s a good way to record the note.
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