how to change case in illustrator

As a freelancer, I get a ton of client emails that contain text that I will be adding to a design in Illustrator, and often (ok almost always) the case the text is in, is not what I want. I get text that I will use as headings in sentence case, or for those clients who email me from their phone, everything is often lowercase without any capitalization, and sometimes, particularly with some of my older clients, I get blocks of text in all UPPER CASE.

I want to be able to just copy and paste from my email to an illustrator text box (without retyping it) and convert the case of the text in Illustrator and… now I can.  I’m not sure when this option was added to illustrator,  I only noticed this option was added to the type menu a few months ago.  I already love it. It means I don’t have to retype even short phrases. Being able to change the case of text in illustrator without retyping definitely speeds up my workflow.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to change case in illustrator, the change case options (with some caveats) as well as a non-illustrator app to give you a few more options.

How to  Convert the Case of Text in Illustrator

  1. Select Your Text (either with the Direct Selection Tool or by blocking the text with the Type Tool).
    design in illustrator with text box selected
  2. From the Menu choose Type > Change Case > and then choose one of the four options on the fly-out menu (UPPER CASE, lowercase, Title Case Or  Sentence case).

    use the change case option in illustraton

    the change case option is found on the type menu in illustrator

Text Case Options

Upper Case

All Letters in all words will change to upper case

Example:  A QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG

lowercase

All letters become lowercase.

Example:  a quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Title Case

All words are capitalized.  NOTE: Use this option with a bit of caution. Typically when using title case, as a heading, for example, we would only capitalize the important words.  In the example below “the” would usually not be capitalized.

Example: A Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog

Sentence Case

The first word of each sentence is capitalized. NOTE: If you have proper nouns in your text you will need to manually capitalize them.

Example: A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Change Case Keyboard Shortcut

Sorry in Illustrator 22/23 there isn’t a keyboard shortcut to change case. Illustrator does allow you to define your own custom keyboard shortcuts.

Change Case FAQ

  • Use the Type Tool (T) to select the text you wish to change
  • then, from the menu select Type> Change Case > lowercase.

How do I change all caps to lowercase in Adobe?

  • Use the Type Tool (T) to select the text you wish to change
  • then, from the menu select Type> Change Case > lowercase.

How do I convert all caps to normal?

  • Use the Type Tool (T) to select the text you wish to change
  • then, from the menu select Type> Change Case > Sentence Case.

How do you change sentence case in Illustrator?

  • Use the Type Tool (T) to select the text you wish to change
  • then from the menu select Type> Change Case> Upper case | lowercase | Title Case | Sentence Case

Conclusion

Using the change case option is something I use every day. For longer text, I had a web-based option (see below) so I never had to retype long paragraphs of text. Where I did find myself retyping things was typically for headings. I would get some long blocks of text and then want to use the contrast of upper case to make the headings stand out.

I also find when I am doing a design I will often play with the case in the headings to get the right feel so being able to change case from title case to uppercase, and back and forth without retyping is the bomb!

Compare the two designs below. The First uses sentence case and it seems tentative (maybe it’s not much of a sale) and in the second design, the case of the heading has been changed to Upper Case and which makes the heading seem more important and perhaps more urgent. It is easier to balance the letterforms in a multi-line title in upper case.

compare heading case in 2 designs

I hope that know you can easily change case without retyping will encourage you to try out different cases for your headings and experiment to find out what case gives your typography the feel you want.

Non- Illustrator Option

I do a lot of work in wordpress or on various social media platforms and I don’t like retyping stuff there either.  Along the way, I ran across a great web-based utility https://convertcase.net/ which allows you to paste in text and convert it to whatever case you want.  It also allows you to generate ASCII art by uploading pictures.