AbstractIn this paper, we continue investigation of the lateral order on vector lattices started in [25]. We consider the complexification of a real vector lattice E and introduce the lateral order on . Our first main result asserts that the set of all fragments of an element of the complexification of an uniformly complete vector lattice E is a Boolean algebra. Then, we study narrow operators defined on the complexification of a vector lattice E, extending the results of articles [22, 27, 28] to the setting of operators defined on complex vector lattices. We prove that every order‐to‐norm continuous linear operator from the complexification of an atomless Dedekind complete vector lattice E to a finite‐dimensional Banach space X is strictly narrow. Then, we prove that every C‐compact order‐to‐norm continuous linear operator from to a Banach space X is narrow. We also show that every regular order‐no‐norm continuous linear operator from to a complex Banach lattice is narrow. Finally, in the last part of the paper we investigate narrow operators taking values in symmetric ideals of compact operators.