Introducing the LAMBDA function
Before the advent of LAMBDA
, creating custom worksheet functions in Excel required writing programming code, such as with Visual Basic for Applications in Excel or by using other languages to create add-ins for Excel. You'll be relieved, and perhaps even amazed, to know that, you don’t need any programming experience to use LAMBDA
. The ability to write formulas in Excel and an understanding of defining Names are all that you need to create custom worksheet functions with LAMBDA
.
Tip
JavaScript-based worksheet functions can be created in Microsoft 365, Excel 2021, and Excel for Web.
LAMBDA
functions can get wildly complex as you can create recursive formulas where a LAMBDA
function refers to itself more than once, akin to a circular reference, as discussed in Chapter 9, Excel Quirks and Nuances. I do not have space to dive deep into LAMBDA
, which means I won’t create any recursive formulas, but I can give you a running start...