Microsoft is launching Office 2021, the new edition of its office suite available as a Microsoft 365 service. It offers several new features.

In parallel with its new Windows 11 operating system already present in laptops sold in France, Microsoft offers its new Office 2021 office suite.

Several new features are on the Office 2021 program, starting with its appearance adopting Sun Valley design codes with rounded edges and transparency effects.

The Excel spreadsheet inaugurates the XLOOKUP tool to facilitate line-by-line research on a sheet and benefits from accelerated calculations and perspectives under dynamic tables via new functions such as Sort/Sort by, Unique, Frequency, Filter and Array.

For its part, LET makes it possible to assign a name to a calculation result while XMATCH searches for an element contained in a matrix/range of cells and returns the relative position of the element or a value in a matrix.

For its part, the Word word processor now benefits from an immersive reader offering more advanced color support and a new read aloud tool in Review. We also note the support of the OpenDocument format (ODF) 1.3.

PowerPoint offers the possibility to reproduce handwriting on a slide and under Windows to record a slideshow supporting recording of ink, video and pointer.

Under the Outlook 2021 email software, you can now translate emails into nearly 70 languages, but also annotate an email or an image in the email body. The search tool improves to find an e-mail, regardless of where it is stored.

Access database software improves management of linked tables (refresh, link, delete) as well as project management and syntax compatibility with SQL for extended data including date and time.

In Office 2021, collaboration features with Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) are improved, such as real-time co-authoring.

On the price side, count 149.99 dollars for the Office 2021 Home and Student edition, whether on Windows or macOS, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Teams. The Home and Small Business version offers Outlook as a bonus as well as the possibility of use the suite for commercial purposes, for $249.99.

You can also opt for a Microsoft 365 service pack including the aforementioned applications plus OneDrive, Access, Publisher, Microsoft Editor and Microsoft Family Safety, for 69 euros per year or 7 euros/month as an individual subscription, while it is necessary to count for Microsoft 365 Family valid for 6 different users respectively 99 euros / year or 10 euros / month.

Microsoft 365 Business prices for VSEs/SMEs start at 4.20 euros/month in the Basic version to climb to 10.50 euros/month in the Standard edition and reach 16.90 euros/month in the Premium version.

Finally, note that Office 2021 is with perpetual license including 5-year support.