Microsoft details Office 2021 features and pricing ahead of October 5 launch

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? October 5 is fast upon us. In the tech world, there’s a lot happening next Tuesday, including the launch of Windows 11 and Office 2021, and Microsoft has finally given us a taste of what to expect from the standalone version of its popular productivity suite.

Office 2021 will incorporate several collaboration features from Microsoft 365. Real-time co-authoring, for example, will allow users to work with others on the same document at the same time using OneDrive.

Both Office 2021 and Microsoft 365 will also include Microsoft Teams for personal use, making it easier to make plans and manage tasks with others. Microsoft Teams is already part of Windows 11, but with the Microsoft 365 and Office 2021 integration, users on Windows 10 and macOS will additionally gain access to it.

Microsoft on October 5 is also introducing a visual update that’ll appear in both Microsoft 365 and Office 2021, accented by a neutral color palette, refreshed tabs in the ribbon, softer window corners and colorful presence indicators to easily see others that are also working in the same document. Redmond said it intentionally timed the refresh with the availability of Windows 11 to create a “coherent and seamless experience on a new Windows 11 PC.”

Office Home and Student 2021 will be priced at $149.99 and comes with Excel, Word, PowerPoint, OneNote and Microsoft Teams, for PC and Mac. Office Home and Business 2021, meanwhile, adds the rights to use the apps for business purposes, and will set you back $249.99. Both offerings, as well as Microsoft 365, will run on Windows 11, Windows 10 and the three most recent versions of macOS.

Notably, both a Microsoft account and an Internet connection are required to use Office 2021.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/91538-microsoft-details-office-2021-features-pricing-ahead-october.html

 

[Dimitriid]

I'd like to apologize for implying there was nothing new or exiting about Windows 11, I should have saved that comment for Office 2021 there's literally nothing new at all.

 

[Eldritch]

I'd like to apologize for implying there was nothing new or exiting about Windows 11, I should have saved that comment for Office 2021 there's literally nothing new at all.

Yes, I read article twice as having a slight modification in color palette can't be the highlight. But it is.
Makes even yearly EA's Fifa releases look better.

 

[raybk]

Windows and Office are like this. New versions do not essentially have new and useful features or functions. In recent years, the company just keeps on changing useless things or even removing useful features in new versions, and then adding these useful features back as newer versions!
All these acts have only one purpose, Money!!

 

[Tams80]

Yes, I read article twice as having a slight modification in color palette can't be the highlight. But it is.
Makes even yearly EA's Fifa releases look better.

Worse. They took away the themes with icons on and now they are just boring plain colours. With more rounded corners. Yay.

 

[Uncle Al]

I guess I'm a renegade because I moved to LibreOffice years ago, been using it in a business environment for years and never had a problem, nor have my other business contacts here (about 2,000 users). I have little use for Office, especially since they eliminated so many of the sub-programs from the original package and the price; well lets just put it out there that nothing beats "free".

 

[netman]

The typical Microsoft annual rip-off...! and Outlook is not even included...!

 

[Dimitriid]

I guess I'm a renegade because I moved to LibreOffice years ago, been using it in a business environment for years and never had a problem, nor have my other business contacts here (about 2,000 users). I have little use for Office, especially since they eliminated so many of the sub-programs from the original package and the price; well lets just put it out there that nothing beats "free".

There are a few holdouts like Excel: chances are someone, somewhere on one of those businesses is using excel for some sort of report. And yes it probably is excel and not Calc or whatever libreoffice uses since it just doesn't has the decades of macros, functions, tricks. etc.

I know this because I work in Data Warehousing and we try really hard to get people to stop using excel and start using Power BI (And SSRS for more on demand stuff) instead but well...It's a slow process.

Still going back to the point of the thread: any version of excel will do. If you're doing something very large you might want 2013 for the xlsx file format that handles a hell of a lot more rows and columns but again: you should be using some actual data analysis tools like Tableau or Power BI instead anyway.

 

[SG736F6]

We have O365 at work and every time there is an update we get help desk tickets like mad for a few days. Microsoft likes to move **** around for no reason it seems. They make weird and random changes to their interfaces and I cannot understand why. It's the same way with Azure, O365 admin center, and just about everything else they make. It's like their engineers have an obsessive compulsive disorder to change things for no good reason. I hate it and I hate that our parent company forces this garbage on us.

 

[Burty117]

They make weird and random changes to their interfaces and I cannot understand why. It's the same way with Azure, O365 admin center.

This, I recently got asked where something is, in an Intune policy, I sent said person a guide on where the setting was a couple of years ago and I just re-forwarded my email.

Turns out it's not their anymore, and when I looked back at old build guides and setup guides in our company from just a few years ago, I realised how much Microsoft have moved, changed and re-named stuff in Azure and O365.

It's actually quite infuriating as it's hard to teach old dog new tricks and we have a lot of old dogs in our business, moving stuff every five seconds is not winning you any favours Microsoft!

 

[RudyBob]

How anyone cares or gets excited about Office is beyond me.

 

[Geralt]

On top of that we have to pay for it!!!

 

[VaRmeNsI]

On top of that we have to pay for it!!!

We do?

 

[Cygus]

No mention about the fact that it Still doesn't support tabs? Ive been using wps office and thunderbird which both do tabs . Having one tab with wps word and another with excel.. Its just so much more intuitive.. using ms office feels like using the old internet explorer, before tabbed browsing...

 

[GregonMaui]

Too bad they didn’t kill tha terrible ribbon and still only only one honking big table per sheet instead of mix and match? And how much do they want? Better software out there for free. If they didn’t have business too scared to move on, they wouldn’t sell any of this outdated crap