Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Capitalizing the First Letter after a Colon.

Capitalizing the First Letter after a Colon

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated November 30, 2018)

3

Becca asked if there is a way to create a default setting so that the first letter following a colon will always be a capital letter. Unfortunately there is no built-in way to do this in Word. You can, however, create a macro that can be used to step through your document and make sure that each lowercase letter following a colon (and a space) is converted to uppercase.

Sub CapsAfterColon()
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = ": ([a-z])"
        .Replacement.Text = ": \1"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = True
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute

    While Selection.Find.Found
        Selection.Range.Case = wdUpperCase
        Selection.Collapse direction:=wdCollapseEnd
        Selection.Find.Execute
    Wend
End Sub

The macro uses a wildcard search to find instances of a colon followed by a space and a lowercase letter. For each instance found, the text is converted to uppercase. The macro searches for and changes the case of all such instances in the document.

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3461) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Capitalizing the First Letter after a Colon.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is four more than 8?

2016-05-13 04:31:52

Emily

Both the original macro and Pam's modification have been REALLY helpful to me. Thanks!

2014-03-13 11:38:08

Pam

I believe I have figured it out! I changed it to this from what I had in the previous post:

.Text = ":" & vbTab & "([a-z])"
.Replacement.Text = ":" & vbTab & "1"

THIS seems to work!

Love your site, BTW. And I did find your "ribbon version" site as well. I think I need to take a VBA course. I can see the possibilities with this are almost endless.

2014-03-13 11:08:06

Pam

Great macro! I need this for a colon plus tab plus capitalize. I tried just replacing the space in your code with what appears to be the tab code (vbTab) but it didn't work.

.Text = ":vbTab([a-z])"
.Replacement.Text = ":vbTab1"

I am a complete novice at this, so this might not even work. But any ideas?

Thank you!

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