Difference Between UPPERCASE and All Caps

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This has been a frustrating issue for many PowerPoint users, and also users of other Office programs. You type some text that is sentence case, but the results are all capital case! Yes, you can use the Change Case option, but why should you have to do so for each slide?

One reason why you may get all capital letters is that you may be using a font that has no lowercase. Some fonts such as Castellar, Copperplate, and Engravers MT don’t have lowercase letters at all. And these fonts are installed by some versions of Microsoft products such as Office.

But let us assume that you are not using any such font. Then why do you get all uppercase? The answer is not too obvious, and to understand why this happens, you must know that there are two ways to add capitalized text in Microsoft Office programs:

1. Real UPPERCASE: Add Formatting After You Type, or as You Type

You can press the Shift key, or press the CAPS Lock key, and type some text that is naturally UPPERCASE, as in capitalized. Alternatively, select any text and use the Change Case | UPPERCASE option, as shown in Figure 1, below–and you will end up with the same results.
Figure 1: Change Case in PowerPoint

2. All Caps: Add Formatting Before You Type

The second, sneaky way is to format a text placeholder so that any case you type ends up to show only UPPERCASE characters! To make this happen, you select an entire text placeholder in PowerPoint’s Slide Master view. Then you will access the Home tab of the Ribbon, and click the dialog launcher in the Font group, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below.
Figure 2: Click the Dialog Launcher
This will bring up the Font dialog box you can see in Figure 3, below. You then choose the All Caps option, shown highlighted in red.
Figure 3: Select All Caps
Now press the OK button.
This is the technique used by some built-in PowerPoint Themes and templates such Circuit, Integral and Main Event to force-capitalize any text you type. To reset placeholders in these Themes and templates to not type UPPERCASE text, you will have to edit the individual Slide Layouts within the Slide Master.
Related Content: Which Themes are Installed in Office Versions?

Are you stuck with many slides that use All Caps formatting? Do you want to make them behave like normal text at one go? Take a look at some amazing VBA code from PowerPoint MVP Steve Rindsberg, in our PowerPoint VBA: Change UPPERCASE To Normal Case feature.

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Difference Between UPPERCASE and All Caps

1. Real UPPERCASE: Add Formatting After You Type, or as You Type

2. All Caps: Add Formatting Before You Type

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