Unlike text editing softwares such as Google Docs and Microsoft Word, Excel does not feature change case. For this reason, users rely on functions to change the case of their text string. Excel LOWER function is one of many text functions that you can use to change the case of a sentence string.
What does LOWER Function do?
Excel lower function changes all letters in a text string to lowercase.
Excel LOWER function Syntax
=LOWER (text)
Arguments
text: refers to the text you want to convert to lowercase
Important Notes
Spaces, punctuation marks, and numbers are not affected by the LOWER function.
This function takes only one argument (text), which can be a cell reference or a text.
After using the lower function on numbers or a text string, it will get rid of number formatting and convert number to text.
Related Functions
Proper Function
Upper Function
Read More
How to lowercase in Excel except first letter: 6 easy ways
Examples
Let’s use the following texts strings and numbers as an example.
- HELLO WORLD
- Hello World
- hello world
- HELLO WORLD 123
The screenshot below shows a summary of the results after using the Excel Lower function on the text strings above.
=LOWER(HELLO WORLD) results to “hello world”
=LOWER(Hello World) results to “hello world”
=LOWER(hello world) results to “hello world”
=LOWER(HELLO WORLD 123) results to “hello world 123”
How to use the Excel LOWER function on dates
As we discussed above, the Excel Lower function removes number formatting. Therefore when you apply this function on a cell containing a date, it will return the serial number, which might cause confusion.
For Example =LOWER(8-Aug-2022) returns 44781
=LOWER(A1) returns 44781
You can navigate this by combining the LOWER function with the TEXT function. The text function converts the date string into text so that the LOWER function can convert the date into lowercase without resulting to a serial number.
=LOWER(TEXT(A1,”mmm d, yyyy”)) results to aug 8, 2022
Download Excel LOWER Function Practice template
How to create Emails using the Excel LOWER function
Emails are a mixture numbers, text and special characters. When you write emails on an Excel sheet with different cases it makes it look untidy. To avoid this, you can make use of LOWER() to change all the text string into lowercase. Thus your sheet will be tidy and appealing to anyone that will go through it. Here are the steps.
Step 1: Type the following formula in an empty cell
=LOWER(A2&B2&”@”&C2)
Step 2: Press Enter
Step 3: Drag the fill handle down to automatically join and convert the rest emails to lowercase.
