REGEXEXTRACT Function not available on desktop

Question

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/regexextract-function-4b96c140-9205-4b6e-9fbe-6aa9e783ff57

Based on this, the REGEXEXTRACT function should be available on desktop, but this is not the case at the moment.

What information should I provide to my IT so they can make sure that it gets added to our devices ?

Is it still for insiders only in beta ?

Answer 1

Are you sure you are on Excel for MS365 and up-to-date?

Answer 2

Hi @Nathalie Nguyen

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A Forum. 

I understand that the REGEXEXTRACT function doesn't seem to be available on your desktop version of Excel, even though the official documentation indicates it should be, and you're looking for information to provide to your IT department. In my test environment, I can confirm that the REGEXEXTRACT function is working as expected on both the Excel desktop app and Excel for the web. 

To help diagnose why it might not be showing up for you, could you please provide a few more details about your environment? 

What is your exact Excel version?  

What version of Windows are you running? 

Are you able to successfully use the function in the web version of Excel? Could you please provide a screenshot of the error you see when you try to use the function in a cell?  

 Note: Please make sure your M365 Excel is up to date

However, you can use a combination of Excel functions to achieve similar results. While Excel does not have built-in support for regular expressions (regex), you can extract text patterns using functions like TEXT, MID, SEARCH, and LEFT, depending on the complexity of your needs. For advanced regex tasks Power Query is often required, but these are not available in Excel for the web.   

Using Power Query (Desktop Only):  

For more advanced pattern matching or regular expressions, you would need to use Power Query in the desktop version of Excel, which allows more complex text manipulation including regex-like operations. Once set up, you can view the data in Excel for the web, but the initial setup must be done in the desktop version.  

Appreciate your patience and understanding. Hopefully, the next information you provide will help us find the most appropriate direction to move forward. 

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Answer 3

Disappointing that I still have to use a third party VBA Macro to do RegEx:

https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/regex-extract-strings-excel/

I am confused why major business licence holders don't get RegEx when they don't have MS365 licences. My colleagues who have had Windows 11 installed apparently still cant use RegEx. My computer has not been updated yet so can't check this yet...