Introducing the New LAMBDA Function in Excel

Another game-changer from Microsoft

It’s fair to say that Excel formulas are becoming like a programming language. Over the past couple of years, Microsoft has fundamentally changed Excel’s calculation engine and introduced a set of functions that allow us to construct formulas to do much more with less.

It doesn’t stop there.

If you are familiar with programming languages, you’ll know what a lambda is. It’s an anonymous function that is passed as an argument or returned from a function call. Well, now that very concept has made its way to Excel.

I am going to introduce to you the new LAMBDA function—which at the time of writing—is only available to Microsoft 365 Office Insiders who are subscribed to the Beta Channel. If you aren’t already, carry out the following steps:

1. Go to File, Account and click on the Office Insider dropdown.
2. Press Join Office Insider.
3. A window will appear allowing you to select Beta Channel from the dropdown.