Change UPPERCASE to lowercase on the fly
We received a lot of great feedback from yesterday’s blog post about accidentally tapping the CAPS LOCK button on your keyboard (and not realizing it until you’re a few sentences in. Here we reveal a super quick shortcut that will fix the problem — instead of re-typing everything in manually.
We received a lot of great feedback from yesterday’s blog post about accidentally tapping the CAPS LOCK button on your keyboard (and not realizing it until you’re a few sentences in. Here we reveal a super quick shortcut that will fix the problem — instead of re-typing everything in manually.
If you realize you"ve been TYPING ALL IN CAPS FOR A FEW SENTENCES by accident, in an email or Word document, we have a quick fix for you so you don’t need to manually type in the text all over again.
This works in Microsoft Outlook as well as Microsoft Word (versions 1997 and later).
If you realize you just typed a few sentences all in CAPS, highlight all the words you wanted fix (CTRL + A will highlight the entire page, if you like), and then press SHIFT+F3 and all the UPPERCASE text will switch to lowercase text. Do it again and it’ll change to Title case, if you prefer.
For example:
HI MOM, HOW ARE YOU TODAY?
(Shift-F3)
hi mom, how are you today?
(Shift-F3)
Hi mom, how are you today?
Filed Under: Computers & Software
I tried highlighting then Shift + F3 – it doesn't work. Am I missing something?
Ray
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The Shift+F3 does work. Do those of you having problems have a keyboard with an F Lock key? If so, you’ll need to press it first. Then try pressing Shift+F3. That’s what I did and it works just fine. Give it a try!
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It only works in Outlook if you are using Word as your email editor.
Tools – Options – Mail Format
Check box beside “Use Microsoft Office Word to edit e-mail messages”
If you are not using Word, you could copy and paste your text into Word, follow the conversion instructions (Shift-F3), and then copy and paste it back into Outlook.
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Ray,
You need to first highlight the text. Then hold down the Shift key and tap F3.
Marc
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It doesn't work.
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Kim,
If you'er running Word 97 or newer, or use Outlook for email, you need to first highlight the text you want to change and then press Shift+F3 and it'll work,
Marc
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It doesn’t work at all. I highlighted the the sentence and then pressed shift and tapped F3 and it doesn’t work. So I don’t know where you discovered this. But I recommend you create a new theory.
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Actually it doesn't work in Outlook Express. It works in Word 97 but the second shift F3 caps the first letter in every main word.
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Hey Kim,
Yes, Outlook but not Outlook Express, I don't think. In Word, the first time you press Shift+F3 it'll change the case from upper to lower or vice-versa and the third time it'll but in what's called "Title case," which typically puts the first letter of he sentence in caps an oher proper names, etc.
Best,
Marc
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I see my mistake – if you don't have punctuation in the last space after the last word, the third shift F3 will read the phrase as a title instead of a sentence, and capitalize the main words. Great tip – I'll have to pass it along at my next work meeting. Thanks and happy Easter.
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Perfect!! This works like a charm. I was having the same problem as Kim thanks for the tip of the punctuation. Have a great day!!
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Thanks for the tip, that was awesome.
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Another way to do this is to copy the text into Word (I still use 2000), highlight the text, and on the 'Format' menu, choose 'change case' and click on 'tOGGLe cASE.' With 'Shift/F3', I find that proper names within a sentence are not capitalized.
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This does not work in Microsoft Outlook.
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Hi Cheryl,
It does work if it's from '97 and newer.
Make sure you first highlight the text you want to change first! CTRL + A will highlight all the words for you.
Best,
Marc
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This did not work for me in Outlook 2003 until I changed the mail format to use MS Word to edit e-mail messages.
This is a feature in MS Word and not Outlook.
To change one word at a time you do not have to highlight the word. You can just place the cursor anywhere in the word.
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There is a simple site for convert lowercase to upper case, and the other way
http://www.caseconvert.com/
You can also count words, characters, find and replace.
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WOOOOOOOOOO
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cool ! i just took help from the word's help contents ! but nothing got from there !
ur superb
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Thanks, it helped me a lot.
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Greaaaaaaaaat info, thanks so much.
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My boss had an issue converting from lower case to upper case. I quickly got online and found this article. It was really helpful. Thanks to everyone.
Kings.
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Wunderbar !!
Wonderful !!
You know, a little tips like that one are really GREAT and helpful so much !!
YOu should continue with these “smallies” …
Thank U,
Danke,
Sincerely
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Thank you for the tip it works like a charm and saves you the hassel of typing it all again…
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Awesome!! Thank-you. I’ll be waiting to see what other little “helps” you can provide!
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