Microsoft is officially launching two new versions of Office this year: Office 2021 for personal users and Office LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) for business purposes. Office 2021 will be an upgrade to Office 2019 and will be available for a one-time cost, without requiring a Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft has no plans to increase the cost, which means you can expect the price to be similar to Office 2019.
As for Office LTSC, a commercial preview will be available in April. Although the company has not confirmed any relevant features in Office 2021, we know that Office LTSC will be supported for at least 5 years. The new LTSC version is expected to bring accessibility improvements, a new dark mode, Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel, as well as other minor changes in all popular applications, including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. These features are also expected to be adopted by Office 2021. Microsoft has promised to share more details about the new features closer to the release date, which would be in the second half of 2021.
The announcement of the new version of Office indicates that Microsoft is not just focusing on Microsoft 365, its cloud-based offering. This makes sense, as many companies do not have the resources to migrate to the cloud completely. Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365, said in an interview with The Verge, “It’s just a matter of trying to serve customers where they are. We certainly have a lot of customers who have moved to the cloud in the past 10 months, which happened in droves, actually. At the same time, we definitely have customers who have specific scenarios where they don’t feel they can move to the cloud. “
Microsoft recently launched its Office all-in-one app for the iPad, giving users access to the company’s productivity software package on the tablet. The new application combines all of Microsoft’s popular office applications, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint, into one application. This is great, especially for students and business customers. Facilitates access to all productivity tools, including easy PDF creation, document signing and more.