Updated October 14, 2026. Written for GridCraft 0.6.1 (what changed since). Prices in USD.
Which Excel you need for each function
A one-time Office purchase stops at the functions of its year, which is why Office Home 2024 ($179.99 once) has XLOOKUP and LAMBDA but not GROUPBY, while Microsoft 365 Personal ($9.99 a month or $99.99 a year) keeps getting new ones.
| Functions | Oldest Excel that has them | GridCraft |
|---|---|---|
| XLOOKUP, XMATCH | Excel 2021; "not available in Excel 2016 and Excel 2019" | Yes |
| FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE and spilling | Excel 2021 | Yes, with the A1# spill reference |
| LET | Excel 2021 | Yes |
| LAMBDA, MAP, REDUCE, SCAN, BYROW, BYCOL, MAKEARRAY | Excel 2024 | Yes, including named LAMBDAs |
| TEXTSPLIT, VSTACK, HSTACK, TAKE, DROP | Excel 2024 | Yes |
| GROUPBY | Microsoft 365 only | Yes, written differently (see below) |
| REGEXTEST, REGEXEXTRACT, REGEXREPLACE | Microsoft 365 only | Yes |
Free Google Sheets also has XLOOKUP, but editing an Excel file there starts with putting it in Google Drive. GridCraft opens the .xlsx in the tab and keeps it on your computer, with Excel's ribbon and formula bar.
Try them on a small list
Paste the 12-row sales list from our pivot table guide into A1 of a blank sheet (Date, Region, Product, Units, Revenue in A1:E13), then type any of these into an empty cell such as G2:
| Formula | Result |
|---|---|
=XLOOKUP("North",B2:B13,E2:E13) | 320, the first North sale |
=XLOOKUP("South",B2:B13,E2:E13,"not found") | not found, instead of #N/A |
=FILTER(A2:E13,E2:E13>400) | The 5 sales above 400, spilled into 5 rows |
=TAKE(SORT(A2:E13,5,-1),3) | The 3 largest sales: 560, 525, 480 |
=SORT(UNIQUE(B2:B13)) | East, North, West |
=LET(rev,E2:E13,units,D2:D13,SUM(rev)/SUM(units)) | 3.35, the average price per unit |
=MAP(E2:E5,LAMBDA(v,IF(v>400,"big","small"))) | big, big, big, small |
=TEXTSPLIT("North,East,West",",") | Three cells: North, East, West |
=REGEXEXTRACT("Order 4471-B","[0-9]+") | 4471 |
Dynamic-array results spill into the cells below and to the right, as in Excel, and #SPILL! appears if something is in the way. FILTER returns dates as serial numbers (46030 for 2026-01-08), so give the spilled date column a date format.
GROUPBY and PIVOTBY take the function in quotes
Check this before you copy a GROUPBY formula from a Microsoft 365 tutorial. In Excel, the third argument of GROUPBY is a function, written bare: =GROUPBY(B2:B13,E2:E13,SUM). GridCraft returns #NAME? for that form, and #CALC! for a LAMBDA in that place. It wants the function's name as text, or Excel's SUBTOTAL number for it:
=GROUPBY(B2:B13,E2:E13,"SUM")That returns East 2185, North 1115, West 1460 and a total of 4760. PIVOTBY works the same way. Since each program rejects the other's spelling, a workbook that has to work in both is safer with formulas both understand:
=SORT(UNIQUE(B2:B13))
=SUMIFS(E2:E13,B2:B13,G2#)The first spills the region names into G2:G4, and the second, typed in H2, adds up each region's revenue next to them.
The ten functions GridCraft doesn't have
A formula that uses one of these shows #NAME?:
| Function | What to do instead |
|---|---|
| GETPIVOTDATA | SUMIFS or COUNTIFS on the PivotTable's source data |
| IMAGE | Insert › Pictures › Place in Cell puts a picture from your computer inside a cell |
| STOCKHISTORY, TRANSLATE, DETECTLANGUAGE, COPILOT, PY | None: these call Microsoft's online services |
| RTD, CALL, REGISTER.ID | None: these talk to programs and DLLs on a Windows PC |
Nine more exist by name but return an error on purpose: the seven CUBE functions give #N/A, because there is no cube connection to ask, and WEBSERVICE and FILTERXML give #VALUE!. Everything else on Microsoft's list is there, including the full financial, engineering and statistical sets.
Where a result can differ from Excel
GridCraft is alpha software, and matching Excel to the last digit is still work in progress. Its developers flag the functions that solve iteratively, RATE, IRR, XIRR and YIELD, as the most likely to disagree in the last digits. FORECAST.ETS can differ on noisy data, because Excel's optimiser is undocumented. For a loan schedule or an investment return you'll present, compare the key figure with Excel or a calculator once.
References to other workbooks, like [Budget.xlsx]Sheet1!A1, keep their last value and never update. When you send a file back, keep the recipient's Excel in mind: XLOOKUP, FILTER and the newer functions don't work in Excel 2016 or 2019, so a workbook built on them is only useful to people on Excel 2021 or later.
Prefer Spanish? Under View › Interface language, Español switches to Spanish function names, decimal commas and semicolons between arguments. Saved files still use English formulas, so they open anywhere.
Which way to go
If you own Excel 2016 or 2019 and need XLOOKUP or FILTER a few times a month, open those files in GridCraft and save them back as .xlsx; it costs nothing and needs no account. If you build workbooks every day with colleagues on Microsoft 365, the subscription is the better tool: it has the ten missing functions, its results are the ones your colleagues see, and the formulas from their tutorials paste in unchanged. Office Home 2024 only makes sense if you want a one-time purchase and can live without GROUPBY and REGEX.
Not sure how to write the formula? The AI formula generator writes it from a plain description and avoids the functions GridCraft lacks. In the spreadsheet itself, the Formulas tab lists what's available by category, from Financial to Lookup & Reference.