Proper Capitalization in Excel

A question that I've had asked of me many times lately has been of the following variety: "How do I capitalize all these names in excel?"

Whether you have a list of names that are in all lower case, all upper case or mixed the answer is always the same. Just use the built-in proper function in Excel.

Say someone sends you a spreadsheet with the first name field that looks like this:

Now you want to contact these people, but you want their first names to be properly capitalized (DOREEN would become Doreen). In cell B2 enter the following formula:

 =proper(A2)

Then you should see the following:

Then copy that formula all the way down and you're all set. Don't forget to copy and paste values if you plan to delete the all caps name column.