Among all operations on working with symbols, their modification is one of the most popular. The most modifiable are the alphabetic characters.
Change the letter case
The main attribute subject to change in alphabetic characters is their case. !SEMTools has many non-trivial ways to change lowercase letters to uppercase and vice versa:
- instantly correct the register of toponyms (the add-in knows about 40,000 of them),
- translate everything into upper or lower case,
- to uppercase the first letters of sentences,
- make all words capitalized,
- to capitalize words containing Latin characters,
- make all the letters of Latin words capitalized,
- automatically recognize and correct the case of abbreviations.
See Changing Letter Case in Excel for details.
Replace diacritic characters with latin
There are several scenarios where replacing diacritic characters with Latin characters might be necessary:
- Domain names: Some domain name systems do not support diacritic characters, and domain names with diacritics may not resolve properly. For example, the domain name “café.com” may not be valid in some systems, and “cafe.com” would be the recommended alternative.
- Data normalization: When working with data from different sources, it is common to encounter variations in the use of diacritics. Replacing diacritic characters with their Latin equivalents can help to standardize the data and make it more consistent.
- Search engine optimization (SEO): In some cases, using diacritic characters in website content may not be optimal for SEO purposes. Replacing diacritics with Latin characters can help to improve the visibility and accessibility of the content in search engines.
- Communication with non-native speakers: If you are communicating with people who are not familiar with diacritic characters, replacing them with Latin characters can help to ensure clarity and avoid confusion.
Replace “quotation marks” with «guillemets»
Sometimes you might need to replace quotation marks with guillemets:
- Writing in a language that traditionally uses guillemets instead of quotation marks, such as French or Spanish.
- Formatting a document or typesetting for a publication that requires the use of guillemets, such as a book or academic paper.
- Avoiding confusion or ambiguity when quoting text that contains nested quotations or dialogue within a larger quote. Guillemets can help to visually distinguish between different levels of quotation.
- Aesthetic or stylistic preference, such as when designing a website or creating graphic design elements that use guillemets for a particular look or feel.
- Consistency with other documents or sources that use guillemets, such as when translating a text that originally used quotation marks into a language that traditionally uses guillemets.
Useful tips
Before you can change anything, you have to find it. In addition, if we are talking about a mass replacement of several values in Excel, on large volumes of data, a preliminary search will be very helpful. The point is that the symbol substitution operation consumes a lot of CPU resources and can take a long time if you run it on the whole data array.
Therefore, pay attention to the Find Symbols in Excel section – it will help to optimize the process of working with data.
You might also find the sections helpful:
- link here soon (How to remove unnecessary characters in Excel);
- link here soon (Extract characters by condition in Excel).