Software
Microsoft announces Office 2021, available later this year for Windows and macOS
Two new versions of Office are being announced today by Microsoft: the Consumer Office 2021 version and Office LTSC for commercial customers. Office 2021 will be available for both Windows and macOS later this year, and it is designed for those who don't want to subscribe to Microsoft 365 cloud-powered variants, similar to the previous Office 2019 release.
Microsoft has not yet fully detailed all the features and changes in Office 2021, but in Excel, the Office LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) variant will include things such as support for dark mode, improvements in accessibility, and features such as Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP. Similar features will include Office 2021.
Don't expect any big changes to the UI here, either. Dark mode is the visually obvious change, but Microsoft will still focus most of its interface and cloud-powered features first on the Office versions of Microsoft 365.
Office LTSC is a clear acknowledgment from Microsoft that, however, not all of its business clients are prepared to move to the cloud. It's just a matter of trying to meet customers where they are, in an interview with The Verge, Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365, explains.
We certainly have a lot of customers who have been moving to the cloud for the past 10 months, which really happened en masse. We certainly have clients at the same time who have specific scenarios where they don't feel like they can move to the cloud.
These specific scenarios include regulated industries where, on a monthly basis, processes and apps can not change, or manufacturing plants that rely on Office and want a locked-in time release. Microsoft is committed to another permanent version of Office for the future as well, but pricing is changing and how these new versions will be supported.
Office LTSC, instead of the seven that Microsoft typically provided for Office, will now only be supported for five years. Pricing for Office Professional Plus, Office Standard, and individual apps for commercial customers is also 10 percent higher, with customer and small business prices remaining the same for Office 2021.
The timing of Office LTSC support aligns more closely with how Windows is supported, and as a result, Microsoft is also aligning its release schedules more closely for both Office and Windows. In the second half of 2021, both future versions of Office LTSC and Windows 10 LTSC will be released.
