Microsoft has announced its new lifetime version of Office this year, Office 2021. Through the "Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel" (LTSC), commercial and government users can now get Office 2021, which does not require an annual subscription like Microsoft 365 (Office 365).
Office LTSC was developed thinking about companies and factories that, due to the processes carried out, cannot change the programs monthly (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc). Because of this, Office 2021 does not offer AI-powered features (artificial intelligence), something that Microsoft 365 (Office 365) has, in addition to not having new features.
Microsoft Office has new interface released for Insiders
5 years support
According to Microsoft, Office LTSC (Office 2021) will be supported by the company for 5 years. That is, the Windows developer will support Office 2021 until 2026. Of course, other lifetime versions will be made available by Microsoft over the next few years.
What's new in Office 2021 for home and business use?
According to Microsoft, Office 2021 for ordinary consumers will be similar to the one for companies and also offers an update blocking function. Check out the new features that are present in Office 2021 below:
- Inline Focus - Similar to a Reading Mode to remove distraction and scroll through Word documents line by line.
- XLOOKUP function - helps you find things in a table or range by row in an Excel worksheet.
- Dynamic array support - New functions in Excel that use dynamic arrays.
- Dark Mode - All Office apps will include support for dark mode.
Launch, price and availability
Office 2021 will be available on October 5, 2021, the same day as the release of Windows 11 (stable version). Microsoft has not yet revealed the prices it will be charged for its lifetime (subscription-free) productivity suite.
