How to Capitalize All Letters in Excel

This tutorial takes about 2 minutes to complete.

Before you start

Excel has a built-in function called UPPER that converts any text to uppercase letters. This tutorial shows how to apply it to an entire column of names (or any other text), and then lock the results in place so they stop updating when the original data changes.

Step 1: Enter the UPPER formula

In your spreadsheet, you should have lowercase text in one column — for example, names in column A. Click into a blank cell next to it (column B, row 1), type =, then the UPPER function with a reference to the first cell of your data:

=UPPER(A1)

Hit Enter. The content of cell A1 now appears in uppercase in this cell.

Step 2: Fill the formula down to all rows

To apply the same formula to every row below, click back on the cell with your formula (B1). Move your cursor to the bottom-right corner of that cell until it turns into a black plus sign (the fill handle), then double-click. Excel automatically fills the formula down through all adjacent rows that have data in column A.

One thing to remember: column B isn't a fixed copy of column A — it's a live formula. If you change or add a name in column A, the matching cell in column B updates automatically to show the new uppercase version. This is convenient if your source data keeps changing, but if you want the uppercase text to stay fixed instead, see Step 4 below.

Step 3: Confirm every row was filled in

After double-clicking the fill handle, every row in column B should now show the uppercase version of its matching row in column A — not just the first one. Scroll down to confirm the formula was applied all the way to the bottom of your real data, with no gaps.

Step 4: Paste as values to make the text static

If you want the uppercase results to stop updating when column A changes, convert them from formulas to plain text:

1. Highlight all the cells in column B that contain your formula results.
2. Right-click and choose Copy.
3. Click on cell A1 (or wherever you want the values pasted).
4. Right-click again and choose Paste Special → Values (the icon with "123" on it).

This replaces the formulas in column A with their current uppercase results as plain, unchanging text. Your data is now locked in uppercase form.

That's it — your original lowercase text in column A has been converted to uppercase and saved as static values. If you no longer need the formula column, you can delete column B.