Like many different organizations, Microsoft offers a membership subscription edition of Office, i.e., Office 365. This version of Office is very often updated with new updates and features. If you have Office 365, you already have all the features incorporated in Office 2021 and Office LTSC 2021, with many additional features that aren’t present in Office 2021 or Office LTSC 2021.

But not every person wants to buy software on a month-to-month or yearly subscription basis. Some do not require the most updated version of the software and find that capacities of an old rendition of Microsoft Word are sufficient for their work. Or Business users who do not prefer to move to the cloud search for the other options available in contrast to the cloud-based Office solutions. Microsoft appears to perceive this problem and has come up with Microsoft Office software versions as a solution for them.

When Microsoft delivered Office 2019, it said that it wouldn’t be the last time it would provide a perpetual licensed version of Office software. In February 2021, Microsoft confirmed these plans and reported that two new forms of Office will be released in October 2021. Microsoft declared that it would launch the latest version of Office for Mac and Windows OS on Tuesday, 5 October.

In its launch blog post, Microsoft uncovered the prices of its perpetual-license versions of Office 2021 and listed the scope of features and functionalities it has taken from Office 365 and merged into the new Office 2021 suite. Office 2021 is aimed at consumers and very small business users. On 16 September, Microsoft launched Office LTSC 2021, and the abbreviation stands for “Long-Term Support Channel. This perpetual-license Office is aimed mainly at business and government clients. Dissimilar to Office 2021, Office LTSC 2021 isn’t sold in retail. However, it is only available for purchase through volume licensing.

Here’s everything you need to know about Microsoft Office 2021, including its updated features, price, minimum system requirements, what’s new in the latest version of Office 2021, and more.

Office Home and Student 2021 conveys a sticker price of $149.99 (approximately Rs 11,100) and incorporates Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams for Windows OS and macOS. Office Home and Business 2021 costs around $249.99 (approximately Rs 18,600). It includes everything available in Office Home and Student 2021, Outlook for PC and Mac, and the rights to utilize the applications for business purposes. The users who want to purchase Office 2021 can buy it from retailers worldwide and through the Microsoft website from 5 October.

Features

As far as new features are concerned, Microsoft has updated this latest version with:

• Collaboration tools found in Microsoft 365 of Office, with real-time co-authoring, OneDrive support, and Microsoft Teams inclusion.
• Better collaboration control with commenting option with co-authors and check who else is working with you in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• A new list of commands added to Microsoft Excel for improved searching, locating, and calculating functions like XLOOKUP, XMATCH, FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE, RANDARRAY, and LET.
• PowerPoint updated with the better arrangement and presentation features for slides like Replay or Rewind animation to ink, presenter video, and laser pointer recording, linking slides, etc.
• Microsoft word which includes various improvements like support for Open Document Format (ODF) 1.3 and an updated draw tab to access and change the color of ink tools immediately.
• Microsoft continually adding more rich media content to the Office Premium Creative Content collection and an organized library of pictures, symbols, and more that assists you with articulating your thoughts.
• The update that has improved the performance, stability, and speed across various Office programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
• The option to save your changes in a single go. Just upload your documents to One Drive, One Drive for Business, or SharePoint Online save your updates automatically.
• Experience to enhance syntax compatibility with SQL, and it is used to improve the accuracy and extent of detail in documents that incorporate date and time.

During this pandemic, safety precautions have become completely essential for business organizations. The new feature of Office 2021 will help many organizations to re-plan according to the social-distancing guidelines. The Visio template feature, and the Workplace Social Distancing stencil, provide various shapes, fill patterns, and line designs, both scaled and unscaled, to assist in this process.

Minimum system requirements for Office 2021

Microsoft has not publicly released any minimum system requirements for Microsoft Office 2021 yet. But we are not expecting much change in system requirements between Office 2019 and Office 2021. Therefore, if you own a PC that supports Office 2019, there’s a great possibility that it will likewise be able to run Office 2021 without any issues.

Let’s take a look at the rundown list of Office 2019’s minimum system requirements:

• Processor of 1GHz dual-core
• GPU withDirectX 9 or higher and WDDM 2.0 or higher
• 4GB RAM
• 4GB of storage
• 1280×768 display screen resolution
• Certain features may require .NET 4.6 or higher
• Certain Outlook features require Microsoft Edge WebView2
• Latest version of internet browsers like Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Chrome, or Firefox

How to upgrade to Office 2021

Sadly, it’s impossible to update Office 2021 from Office 2019 without paying the total cost of the latest version.  If you want to upgrade to the newest version, you can choose from two options:

• Purchase a Microsoft 365 subscription with a month-to-month or yearly payment plan.
• Purchase the latest Office 2021 suite with a one-time payment.

You can visit our Wroffy Technologies page to get the latest information on the improved features, bug fixes, and security updates for Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Office for Windows and macOS as Microsoft releases them.