In this paper, we continue investigation of the lateral order on vector lattices started in [25]. We consider the complexification 𝐸 ℂ of a real vector lattice 𝐸 and introduce the lateral order on 𝐸 ℂ . Our first main result asserts that the set of all fragments 𝔉 𝑣 of an element 𝑣 ∈ 𝐸 ℂ of the complexification of an uniformly complete vector lattice 𝐸 is a Boolean algebra. Then, we study narrow operators defined on the complexification 𝐸 ℂ 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 ∶ 𝐸 ℂ → 𝑋 from the complexification 𝐸 ℂ 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 𝐸 ℂ to a Banach space 𝑋 is narrow. We also show that every regular order-no-norm continuous linear operator from 𝐸 ℂ to a complex Banach lattice (𝓁 𝑝 () ℂ is narrow. Finally, in the last part of the paper we investigate narrow operators taking values in symmetric ideals of compact operators.