Office 2021 release day is here! For users who don't want to be tied into a monthly subscription, Office 2021 is a flat rate experience. Here's the pricing below:

• Office Home and Student 2021 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Microsoft Teams): $149.99 
• Office Home And Business 2021 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, and Outlook): $249.99

Whilst the price increase seems a little dramatic for the addition of Microsoft Outlook with Office Home and Business 2021, this does include the right to use the package for commercial purposes. Office 2021 comes as a welcome proposal for Windows 10, Windows 11, and macOS users that just want to pay for a product once, not monthly.

Office 2021 Features

There's a host of new features coming to Office 2021, some of which used to be Office 365 features. Here's the full list:

Office 2021 – Microsoft Excel

• XLOOKUP: Find everything you need in a table or range, row by row.
• Dynamic Arrays: Six new functions return multiple values (FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE, AND RANDARRAY.
• Let Function: Now you can assign names to calculation results.
• XMATCH Function: Searches for a specified item in an array or range of cells and returns its position.

Office 2021 – Microsoft Powerpoint 

• Improved Record Slide Show: Now supports presenter video, ink, and laser pointer recording.
• Replay Ink Strokes: Illustrate ideas step-by-step with pause and resume support.
• Arrange Elements For Screen Readers: See elements in screen-reading order or rearrange.

Office 2021 – Microsoft Outlook

• Translate and Ink: Translate emails into over 70 different languages and annotate using your finger, pen, or mouse.
• Instant Search: Use the search bar to find email messages

Office 2021 – Microsoft Access

• Updated Link Table Manager: Refresh, relink or remove linked tables.
• Date/Time Extended Data Type: SQL DateTime 2 to enhance syntax compatibility with SQL.
• Enhanced Tabs: Clearly see active tabs. Drag and close with one click.

Office 2021 – Microsoft Visio

• New Stencils And Shapes: Create more diagrams for multiple uses.
• New AWS Stencils And Shapes: Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure shapes now supported.

Office 2021 – General Feature Updates

• Hex Color Value: New input field eliminates the need to convert RGB color values into Hex color values.
• New Sketched Style Outline: Give a casual and hand-shaped look to shapes in presentations.
• OpenDocument Format Support: .ODF support is now included.
• OneDrive Support: All documents autosave.
• Updated Draw Tab: Quickly access color palette and point eraser, ruler, and lasso.
• Improved Performance: Improved performance, stability, and speed
• Microsoft Search: Search across all Office 2021 applications.
• Updated Stock Media: Content added to the Office Premium Content collection.
• Visual Refresh: A new clean and clear style that communicates action and features with simple visuals.

For all things Microsoft and Windows 11, bookmark and check out our Windows 11 Hub.

About the Author

Christian Wait

Christian 'Reggie' Waits' is a contributor to PC Guide, having written a wide array of how to and buying guide content.