I tried these 6 new Excel functions and they saved me a ton of time

Whether you’re managing a business, leading a team, or simply keeping track of your finances, Excel spreadsheets remain one of the most important tools in day-to-day work. That’s why Microsoft continues to roll out new functions and features on a regular basis. If you aren’t taking advantage of these additions, you could be missing out on faster, more efficient ways to get things done.

While some new Excel functions receive plenty of attention, many useful ones fly under the radar. However, I’ve identified the six featured here as must-know functions for 2026, especially because they’ve already made a noticeable difference in my workflow.

Regular expression (regex) functions

Find, extract, and clean data without endless text formulas

If you’ve ever wished Excel could do more than just find an exact word or number, its regex search functions are what you’ve been waiting for. Regex is a standardized language for describing text patterns, and it’s now available in all versions of Excel for Microsoft 365. Excel uses the PCRE2 flavor of regex and provides three dedicated functions for working with it.

First, REGEXTEST checks whether any part of a cell matches a pattern and returns TRUE or FALSE. For example, if you want to verify that all Order IDs in Column G are exactly nine digits long, you could use a formula like this:

=REGEXTEST(G2:G100, "^\d{9}$")

The ^ anchors the match to the start of the text, \d matches any digit, {9} specifies exactly nine digits, and $ anchors the match to the end. If anything is off, the formula returns FALSE and instantly flags the invalid data.

Then there’s REGEXEXTRACT, which pulls specific substrings from messy text. Imagine your system stores data such as “ID_897751939-EU” in a single cell, but you only need the two-letter region code:

=REGEXEXTRACT("ID_897751939-EU", "[A-Z]{2}$")
=REGEXEXTRACT("G2:G100", "[A-Z]{2}$")

These formulas return “EU” because [A-Z]{2} matches exactly two uppercase letters, while $ ensures they appear at the very end of the string.

Finally, REGEXREPLACE swaps matched patterns with something else. For example, if you need to mask the middle digits of an Order ID before sharing a dataset publicly, you could use:

=REGEXREPLACE(TEXT(G2:G100,"0"), "(\d{3})\d{3}(\d{3})", "$1***$2")

This formula turns an Order ID such as 897751939 into 897***939. The parentheses create capturing groups that preserve the first and last three digits, while the middle three are replaced with asterisks.

Regex comes with a bit of a learning curve, but you don’t need to memorize every token. Microsoft maintains a complete reference page, and you can also use an AI chatbot to generate patterns from a plain-English description of what you need.

IMPORTTEXT and IMPORTCSV

Bring in CSV and text files without touching Power Query

Getting a CSV or text file into Excel typically means launching the Power Query feature, clicking through an import wizard, and adjusting formatting settings. IMPORTCSV and IMPORTTEXT streamline that entire process into a single formula. The result is a live, refreshable dynamic array, meaning that if the source file changes, your spreadsheet can reflect those updates without any manual intervention.

For example, imagine your team receives a monthly CSV file containing overseas sales transactions. Instead of importing it manually every month, you can enter the following formula at the start of the last row in your spreadsheet:

=Importcsv("C:\Users\uche_\Downloads\Sales Project\June2026_Updates.csv", 1)

Getting your file’s address is as simple as right-clicking the file and selecting Copy as path. The 1 towards the end of the formula tells Excel to skip the first row so you don’t duplicate the header that’s already on your worksheet.

IMPORTTEXT works similarly but offers more control, including options for delimiters, encoding types, and the number of rows to import. For straightforward use cases, however, IMPORTCSV’s simpler syntax makes it the easier choice.

LAMBDA Function

Build formulas once and reuse them everywhere

With LAMBDA, you can create your own custom Excel functions using standard Excel formulas, assign them friendly names, and use them anywhere in your workbook. For example, imagine you’re calculating gross margin across a large sales dataset. Instead of repeating a nested ROUND formula throughout your spreadsheet, you can define a custom function called PROFITMARGIN in the Name Manager using the following formula:

=LAMBDA(profit, cost, ROUND(profit / (profit + cost), 4))

After saving it, you can calculate gross margins anywhere in your workbook with a much simpler formula:

=PROFITMARGIN(N2:N100, M2:M100)

Even though LAMBDA isn’t one of Excel’s newest functions, it still isn’t as widely adopted as it should be. It’s especially useful for teams because it makes spreadsheets easier to understand and maintain.

If you share a workbook that uses custom LAMBDA functions, your teammates won’t have to decipher long, cryptic formulas every time they need to make an update. And as long as everyone is using Excel for Microsoft 365 (Windows or Mac) or Excel 2024 (Windows or Mac), the functions will work as intended.

IMAGE Function

Pull logos, flags, and photos directly into cells

The IMAGE function lets you pull images from a URL directly into a cell, with the image remaining anchored to the underlying data. Unlike floating images, which can become misaligned when you sort, filter, or resize columns, images inserted with the IMAGE function behave much more like regular cell content.

The practical applications are extensive. For example, if you’re building an executive dashboard for multiple sales regions, you can pull flag icons directly into your report with a formula like these:

=IMAGE("https://mycompany.com/assets/flags/" & A2 & ".png", A2, 1)
=IMAGE("https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/" & SUBSTITUTE(A2, " ", "_") & ".png", A2, 0)

This formula fetches the image named after the region listed in cell A2 (for example, https://mycompany.com/assets/flags/Sub-Saharan%20Africa.png) and displays it in the cell containing the formula. The 1 at the end sets the sizing mode, allowing the image to scale automatically whenever you resize the row or column.

Product catalogs, brand asset directories, team rosters with headshots, and any other datasets that benefit from visual context become much easier to work with when images live directly alongside the relevant information. Better yet, the IMAGE function is available in Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel 2024, and Excel for mobile on both iOS and Android.

TRIMRANGE Function

Trim away empty rows and columns before they cause problems

When you copy and paste data or import records from legacy systems, it’s common to end up with blank rows at the bottom of your dataset or empty columns along the right edge of a range. These ghost rows and columns may be easy to miss, but Excel formulas certainly notice them. They can inflate counts, skew averages, and create all kinds of unnecessary issues in your calculations.

TRIMRANGE removes those empty edges in memory before a formula processes the data. For example, if your sales records run from A1 to N100 but the selected range extends to N150 with 50 blank rows at the bottom, you could use the following formula:

=TRIMRANGE(A1:N150, 2, 0)

This formula trims the trailing empty rows while leaving the columns untouched. The 2 tells Excel to remove trailing rows, while the 0 ensures the columns remain unchanged. As a result, Excel passes a clean 100-row array to the next formula. The only catch is that TRIMRANGE is currently available exclusively in Excel for Microsoft 365.

DETECTLANGUAGE and TRANSLATE functions

Break language barriers

DETECTLANGUAGE identifies the language of a text string and returns its standard language code. For example, you can run the following formula:

=DETECTLANGUAGE("Sehr schnelle Lieferung, vielen Dank!")

Excel will return “de” for German. If your data comes from customer forms, surveys, or international reports, automatically identifying the language can make it much easier to sort, filter, and group responses without manually reviewing every entry.

TRANSLATE takes things a step further by converting text from one language to another directly within a cell:

=TRANSLATE("Livraison très rapide, merci!", "fr", "en")

This formula returns “Very fast delivery, thank you!” without requiring you to copy and paste the text into a separate translation service.

You can make the process even more efficient by combining both functions. If your feedback column contains entries in multiple languages, and you don’t want to specify the source language manually each time, simply nest DETECTLANGUAGE inside TRANSLATE:

=TRANSLATE(P2, DETECTLANGUAGE(P2), "en")

Excel will detect the language and translate the text in a single step. For global teams managing customer feedback, supplier communications, or multilingual reports, this pair of functions is an easy way to remove language barriers without ever leaving Excel. As long as you have Excel for Microsoft 365, they’re well worth adding to your toolkit.

The future of Excel is doing more for you

Excel has always rewarded anyone who takes the time to learn the things it can do, and it likely always will. These six functions are evidence of the direction the software is heading: toward spreadsheets that automate more work, reduce manual effort, and help you get results faster.

All that’s left is to learn these functions and start taking advantage of everything modern Excel has to offer.

OS

Windows, macOS

Supported Desktop Browsers

All via web app

Developer(s)

Microsoft

Free trial

One month

Price model

Subscription

iOS compatible

Yes

Microsoft Excel is a powerful spreadsheet application used for data organization, analysis, and visualization. It supports formulas, functions, pivot tables, and charts to process complex datasets efficiently. Widely used in business and education, Excel also integrates with other Microsoft 365 apps for collaboration, automation, and real-time data insights.