Excel 2024: Store Complex Formula Logic in LAMBDA function
October 3, 2024 - by Bill Jelen
Excel has a great formula language with hundreds of built-in calculations, but it doesn't have functions for every possible calculation. A new research project from Microsoft's Calc Intelligence team in England will allow you to create your own functions.
The new function, LAMBDA
, is available for any Microsoft 365 subscribers who opt into the Office Insiders program's Beta Channel. It's named after Princeton University mathematician Alonzo Church, who invented lambda calculus in 1936. Church was the doctoral advisor of Alan Turing, the famous mathematician who proposed the Turing machine to perform calculations long before modern computers were invented.
Imagine performing a complex calculation and passing variables to it. The variable names and logic are stored in the LAMBDA
function and after testing in the worksheet you create a Name and insert the logic into name manager.