Office 2021 Standard Package: What's New?

This new version of the Office 2021 Standard package is very similar to the non-subscription version Microsoft 365 or Office 365... but not quite. We tell you all about it, below:

Two weeks after the launch of Office LTSC 2021, the new non-subscription version of the Office suite for businesses, Microsoft has released Office 2021 Standard for home, student and small business users, available now on our website.

But it hasn't always been easy: for years, Microsoft has favoured the subscription version of its Office suite - known as Office 365 or Microsoft 365, depending on the licence - over the non-subscription version, the so-called "perpetual" version of Office. Subscribers to Office 365/Microsoft 365 pay ongoing fees to use the software, while buyers of the perpetual version pay a one-time fee and own the software forever.

When the Office 2016 suite was first released at the end of 2015, the open-ended version and the Office 365 version had the same features. But they soon parted ways: Microsoft started introducing new features in Office 365 that the open-ended version of Office 2016 did not get. When Office 2019 was released three years later, it only included some of the features that Office 365 had at the time. Since then, the open-ended version of Office 2019 has remained static while Office 365/Microsoft 365 has continued to receive new features. Microsoft even went so far as to launch an advertising campaign smearing Office 2019 in comparison to Office 365.

Now, finally, the Office 2021 Standard package will contain the features that were already present in Office 365/Microsoft 365 - or at least most of them. However, Office 2021 will not receive any new features in the future, but it will receive security updates.

Real-time co-authorship

Although Microsoft touted live collaboration as a key feature of Office 2016, it turned out that real-time collaborative editing (called "co-authoring" by Microsoft) was reserved for Office 365 subscribers.

For non-subscribed users of Word 2016 and PowerPoint 2016, a kind of unreliable group collaboration was offered where you had to save the shared document again and again to share your changes with others and see the changes they made. To see the changes in real time, you had to use the less powerful online versions of Word and PowerPoint. And the Excel 2016 desktop user did not offer live collaboration to non-subscribers at all.

In the Office 2019 suite, real-time co-authoring was introduced in Word, but not in Excel and PowerPoint. Non-subscribers still had to use Excel Online and PowerPoint Online to collaborate in real time.

With the Office 2021 suite, real-time co-authoring is finally available in all three desktop clients, provided the documents being collaborated on are stored on Microsoft's cloud storage service, OneDrive. Everyone working on the documents sees the changes made by others immediately. Coloured cursors indicate the identity of each person. In our cheat sheet "PowerPoint for Microsoft 365" you can find out how it works.

The "look and feel" is like Windows 11

It's no coincidence that Microsoft is unveiling the new Office 2021 on the same day that it begins rolling out Windows 11. As can also be seen in the image above, the Office 2021 suite is getting a visual refresh to make it look very similar to Windows 11, with rounded windows, a more neutral colour palette and a softer overall look. Despite this new look, Office 2021 still works with Windows 10.

Integration with Microsoft Teams

Office 2021 is integrated with Microsoft Teams chat and video features. You will be able to chat and participate in Teams video calls directly from Office.
Teams was integrated directly into Windows 11, but with the Office 2021 suite you can also use it on Windows 10 and macOS.

Please note that the version of Teams included in Office 2021 and Office LTSC 2021 is not the full enterprise version and does not include features such as channels, searchable message archives and others.

Other new functions

In the Office 2021 suite, there are some more new features that have already been introduced in Office 365/Microsoft 365.
Excel gets a host of new features and functions, including XLOOKUP, which lets you search for things in a table or range. Also new in Excel is a set of dynamic arrays that allow you to enter a formula and get back an array of values. The new XMATCH function in Excel 2021 allows you to search for an item in an array or range of cells and then return the relative position of the item. You can also use it to return a value in an array.

● Slide recording features have been improved in PowerPoint, including video recording of the presenter, ink recording and laser pointer recording.

● Outlook gets an improved search called "Instant Search" as well as the possibility to translate messages into more than 70 languages and to label e-mail messages with ink.

● Access (only available in some corporate Office editions) gets an updated linked table manager and a new extended date/time data type.

● Overall, there are more stock images and icons, a Microsoft search box for searching content in various Office applications, AutoSave that automatically saves changes to

OneDrive, support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.3 and some background performance improvements, among other changes.

Office 2021 Prices and Support

The Office 2021 package licence is available on our website from just €64.99 - a real bargain. And both Office 2021 and Office LTSC 2021 will get five years of support, as opposed to Office 2016 at 10 years and Office 2019 at seven years - another way Microsoft is trying to entice both individuals and businesses to its subscription offerings. But come on, whatever happens, we're here for you too.

If you already have a licence to activate your version of Office, you can download Office 2021 by clicking on the link.

Were we able to help you with this article?? If you still have questions, comment below! (For more information, you can also consult the manufacturer's website for advice).

Greetings,

Your Licendi Team