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New Text Function: PROPER ( )

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Adam_Parker
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Similar to UPPER( ) and LOWER( ), PROPER( ) would take a text string as an argument, and convert it to “Proper Case”, where the first letter of every work is upper-case, and subsequent letters in the word are lower-case.

EXAMPLE:

PROPER ( “1232 DEER VALLLEY AVE” ) would return: 1232 Deer Valley Ave

USE CASE: I use AirTable in my real-estate business, where I hire virtual-assistants to enter public property data scraped from county websites (which often stores data in upper-case). That address data is used to for mail-merge to marketing letters, but unless I take abother step to convert the data to Capital case, the merged data appears ALL UPPERCASE, which makes the letter seem auto-generated.

To solve this, my workflow includes an export from AirTable out to a .csv file, then into Excel where I run a macro that converts to Proper Case, and then is imported back into AirTable, then out to our document merge partner (WebMerge).

I’d love to eliminate that last, fussy part of the workflow where I export out just to convert the text. If I have a PROPER ( ) function as described, it would greatly simplify my AirTable/WebMerge workflow.

Thanks!

32 Comments
scott_aceccorg
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

How is this still a thing in 2024?

Leeway
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hey folks, this is the formula I made to convert a text string to simple title case:

REPLACE(
LOWER(
TRIM(
{Name Text})),
1,1,
UPPER(
LEFT({Name Text},1)))
 
It does the following, in order:
  • Trim extra spaces from the beginning and end of the text string
  • Convert the whole string to lower case
  • Replace the first letter of the string with an upper case version of itself

It won't do complicated title case (McDonnell, Van Der Holt, etc). If I have the time I'll update with some fancy search and replace for those things.

It's simple enough that I'm going to deploy it wherever I need title case, but it sure would be nice if there was a one-step formula available instead.