The LOWER function in Google Sheets is useful if you want to convert a given text into small letters.
Meaning, the LOWER function returns a lowercase version of a given text string.
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The rules for using the LOWER function in Google Sheets are as follows:
- Texts that are directly passed to the LOWER function need to be enclosed with quotation marks.
- The argument can also be a cell reference containing the text that you want to be converted to small letters.
- Like the PROPER and UPPER functions, numbers and punctuation characters are not affected when used in the LOWER Function.
Let’s take an example.
Jaydan is an IT specialist who is responsible for creating the official email address of each employee in the company.
As a standard, he uses the first and last names of the employees for their email addresses. See the batch of employees he’s about to create email addresses for:
He simply joined together the first name, last name, a delimiter that separates them, which is a period(.), and the email address domain.
However, he noticed that the resulting email addresses have the first and last name in the proper case format.
Instead of starting over again or manually converting each item, Jaydan applied the LOWER function to each email address. See the list of the updated email addresses below:
Alternatively, Jaydan could have applied the LOWER function to first and last names before joining them together.
Either way, it should yield the same result, which is a valid email address.
Watch out for a more advanced tutorial and examples on how you can use the LOWER function in the coming weeks. Be sure to subscribe to be notified.
Perfect! Let’s begin getting to know more about our LOWER function in Google Sheets.
The Anatomy of the LOWER Function
So the syntax (the way we write) of the LOWER function is as follows:
=LOWER(text)
Let’s dissect this thing and understand what each of these terms means:
- = the equal sign is just how we start any function in Google Sheets. It is how Google Sheets understand that we are asking it to either do computation or use a function.
- LOWER() is our LOWER function. It converts text into lowercase format.
- text is the only and required argument in the function. This is the text that should be converted to lowercase.
A Real Example of Using LOWER Function
Let’s take a look at the list of email addresses Jaydan prepared below to see how the LOWER function is used in Google Sheets.
Like the PROPER and the UPPER functions, the LOWER function is pretty much straightforward. You need a text to be in all small letters? Go ahead and pass it to the LOWER function and see the magic happens.
In the examples above, the texts to be converted are the values in column A (first name), column B (last name), a period (.), and the email domain (“@mycompany.com”).
Notice how the period (.) and an at sign (@) aren’t affected by the LOWER function. It only converts letters to lowercase format.
The LOWER function above uses a cell reference, which contains the text to be converted into small letters.
On the other hand, you can also pass a direct text as an argument to the LOWER function. See the example below:
Just don’t forget to enclose them with quotation marks so that the LOWER function would know that you are passing a string value.
The LOWER function also processes an argument from a result of another function. In the example above, we can use the CONCATENATE function instead of joining values using the ampersand character (&).
The argument passed to the LOWER function is the resulting string of the CONCATENATE function.
Want to get to know more about the CONCATENATE function? Keep an eye out and be sure to subscribe to be notified as an article about it is underway.
The CONCATENATE function joined four items. These are the texts in cells A2 and B2, a period, and the string “@mycompany”. Note that the texts in cells A2 and B2 are not in the lowercase format.
The resulting string is the text “Fran[email protected]”, which is the text that the LOWER function will then convert into all small letters.
You may make a copy of the spreadsheet using the link I have attached below.
How to Use LOWER Function in Google Sheets
- Click on any cell to make it the active cell. For this guide, I will be selecting C2, where I want to show the result.
- Next, type the equal sign ‘=‘ to begin the function and then follow it with the name of the function, which is our ‘lower‘ (or ‘LOWER‘, not case sensitive like our other functions).
- Type open parenthesis ‘(‘ or simply hit Tab key to let you use that function.
- Now the exciting part! Let’s give our function its only argument, the text. You may pass constant data by typing the exact text after the parenthesis. Just don’t forget to enclose it with quotation marks (“”). In this case, type in ‘Frances’, a period ‘.’, ‘Moreno’, and ‘@mycompany’. Also, since we will be joining them together, put the operation character, which is the ampersand ‘&’, between each text.
- Finally, hit your Enter or Tab key. Cell C2 will now show you the lowercase format of the joined texts provided.
- Notice that in this example, we provided the exact string value, constant, as the argument of our LOWER function. Alternatively, this constant can be a variable or simply a cell address containing your text.
- Edit the formula in cell C2 by changing the first and last name values into the cell addresses. In this case, cells A2 and B2.
- Hit your Enter or Tab key again. Cell C2 will now show you the same result, which is the lowercase format of the email address.
- Copy the formula down to the remaining rows.
That’s pretty much it. You can now use the LOWER function in Google Sheets together with the other numerous Google Sheets formulas to create even more powerful formulas that can make your life much easier.
