For individuals or businesses that don’t want to go to Office with the Microsoft 365 subscription, the latest single purchase version is still Office 2019 for Mac (originally released in 2018). Now, the company has revealed that its successor, Office 2021, will be launched “later this year”, along with sharing some details about what to expect.
There will be two new alternatives to the cloud version of Office / Microsoft 365 for Mac and Windows this year – an Office 2021 for consumers / small businesses and a commercial Office 2021 for larger companies and other organizations (via The Verge).
Microsoft hasn’t fully revealed what changes and new features Office 2021 will bring, but it looks like the software as a whole will be very similar to the 2019 version.
The Verge says, however, that the new commercial version, Office Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) should feature “things like dark mode support, accessibility improvements and features like Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel”. And he adds that the consumer Office 2021 should also.
But in general, it looks like Microsoft will continue the trend to bring the latest new features to Office 365 Microsoft subscribers first.
Microsoft is also changing the support window for Office 2021 LTSC to five years, with prices going up 10%, prices for the consumer version will remain the same:
Office LTSC will now be supported for only five years, instead of the seven that Microsoft typically provides for Office. Prices for Office Professional Plus, Office Standard and individual applications are also increasing 10 percent for commercial customers, with Office 2021 prices for consumers and small businesses remaining the same.
Office 2021 LTSC will have a preview in April, but Microsoft says the consumer version will not be treated the same. Microsoft is currently planning a 2H 2021 release for the new LTSC version of Office. It is unclear as yet whether the 2021 Office for Mac and consumer PC could arrive earlier.
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