Microsoft detailed the features arriving in Office 2021, its single-purchase productivity suite. Microsoft’s Office apps are available as part of other bundles offered by the software giant. Consumers usually get them as part of the Microsoft 365 suite, which needs a subscription.
The new details of Office 2021 seem to be designed to cater to buyers who do not wish to sign up for a subscription and would prefer a one-time purchase. Office 2021 is set to launch on October 5 in two editions to cater to different audiences and users.
The iteration
The first one is Office Home and Student, which will go for $149.99. The second one is Office Home and Business 2021 and will be sold for $249.99. The exact prices in euros are not announced yet, but this gives an indication to what can be expected.
For the higher price, customers will get all the features of the first edition, along with the Mac and Windows version of Outlook. There is also an expanded license that allows the suite to be used in business settings.
Both iterations of Office 2021 bring several feature improvements over the previous release. Some of them are across-the-board upgrades that span the entire suite. Others are narrower in focus and will only come with individual Office applications.
Integration with OneDrive
Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are all getting integration with Microsoft’s OneDrive storage platform, to allow more than one user to edit a document at the same time and save changes instantly to the cloud.
Support for the OpenDocument 1.3 document format will simplify working with files created in other productivity suites.
Editing should see some improvement because of performance enhancement across PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. The app-specific enhancements are numerous. However, Excel will get many of the significant changes.
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