Microsoft will release Office 2021 in two forms later this year.
Office 2021 will be available as a one-time purchase option with five years of support, as with Office 2019 before it, where there is no need for a Microsoft 365 subscription. Office 2021 and its updated features will also come to Microsoft 365 later this year, delivered via the incremental software updates that form part of the Microsoft 365 subscription service.
Costs for the one-time purchase license version have not yet been confirmed, however, Microsoft have stated that previous pricing will not be changed.
Microsoft hasn’t yet published full details of the new features which will be included in Office 2021, however what we do know for sure is that it will ship with OneNote included and will support both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. OneNote was previously removed from the Office suite and looked like it might even be discontinued, so this represents an about turn, perhaps due to user feedback.
Microsoft are also giving Office 2021new features such as accessibility improvements, capabilities like Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP in Excel, dark mode support across multiple applications, and performance improvements across Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint. It won’t come with Skype for Business, but it will come with Microsoft Teams, which reflects the deprecation of Skype for Business in favour of Teams.
For more information please see Microsoft’s announcement here on upcoming products.