Microsoft Word is heavily biased towards writing standard prose paragraphs. Because of this, it assumes that any new block of text you begin typing is the start of a brand new sentence, and it will helpfully automatically capitalize the first letter for you.
While this is great for drafting an essay, it is incredibly annoying if you are building a data table. If you create a table where the first column is a list of lowercase file extensions (e.g., .jpg, .png, .pdf) or a list of specific lowercase variables, Word will violently auto-correct the first letter of every single cell as soon as you hit the Tab key to move to the next column. Pressing Ctrl+Z hundreds of times is not a sustainable solution.
To fix this, you need to tell Word to stop treating table cells like the beginning of a sentence.
How to Turn Off Auto-Capitalization in Word
You can adjust this behavior in Word’s global AutoCorrect Options menu.
- Open Microsoft Word.
- Click on File in the top-left corner of the ribbon.
- Click Options at the bottom of the left sidebar. (If you don’t see it, click “More…” first).
- In the Word Options window, select Proofing from the left-hand pane.
- Click the AutoCorrect Options… button.
- Ensure you are on the AutoCorrect tab.
- Look for the checkbox labeled Capitalize first letter of table cells.
- Uncheck this box.
- (Optional) If you also want to stop Word from capitalizing normal lists outside of tables, you can also uncheck Capitalize first letter of sentences, though this will disable the feature globally across all your documents.
- Click OK twice to close both windows.
From now on, whatever case you type into a table cell will remain exactly as you typed it, regardless of whether it is the first word in the box or not.