What's new in Office 2021 (2024)

InOffice 2021, you'll find new co-authoring features, inking tools, data types, functions, translation and editing tools, motion graphics, ease-of-use features, and so much more! Check out what's available to you today.

Note:Some features listedbeloware notincluded in Office LTSC2021 for commercialcustomers. Each of those features is noted if it does not apply to Office LTSC2021 for commercialcustomers.

Important:If you have a subscription through a Microsoft 365 (or Office 365) plan, that's separate from Office 2021 or Office LTSC 2021. For example, if you are already using Microsoft 365 or if your organization deployed Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (previously named Office 365 ProPlus) to the users in your organization, you don't need Office 2021 or Office LTSC 2021. You already have all the features that are included in Office 2021 or Office LTSC 2021, along with many more features that aren't in Office 2021 or Office LTSC 2021.

One-time purchases of Office 2021

Office Professional 2021

Windows DesktopmacOS

What's new in Office 2021 (1)

Co-author documents

With real-time co-authoring, you can work with others in the same document at the same time. There’s no need to send extra notes or emails because everyone will be notified when a file is updated.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (2) What's new in Office 2021 (3) What's new in Office 2021 (4)

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Note: Co-authoring is not available in Office LTSC 2021.

What's new in Office 2021 (5)

Better collaboration with modern comments

Have control of when you send comments to your co-authors and be productive with a consistent commenting experience between Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (6) What's new in Office 2021 (7) What's new in Office 2021 (8)

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Note: Modern comments is not available in Office LTSC 2021.

What's new in Office 2021 (9)

Know who's in your document

See who else is working along with youand where they are in the document. You'llfind this experience in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (10) What's new in Office 2021 (11) What's new in Office 2021 (12)

Note: This feature is not available in Office LTSC 2021.

What's new in Office 2021 (13)

Visual refresh

Work with a modernized Start experience and newly refreshed tabs in the ribbon. Experience a clean, clear style with monoline iconography, neutral color palette, and softer window corners. These updates communicate action and provide features with simple visuals.

New in:

What's new in Office 2021 (14) What's new in Office 2021 (15) What's new in Office 2021 (16) What's new in Office 2021 (17) What's new in Office 2021 (18)

What's new in Office 2021 (19) What's new in Office 2021 (20) What's new in Office 2021 (21) What's new in Office 2021 (22)

Note: Visual refresh is not available in Office LTSC 2021.

What's new in Office 2021 (23)

Look left, look right… XLOOKUP is here!

Row by row, find anything you need in a table or range with XLOOKUP.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (24)

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What's new in Office 2021 (25)

Dynamic arrays

Write one formula and return an array of values.Expedite calculations and insights with sixnew functions: FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE, and RANDARRAY.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (26)

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What's new in Office 2021 (27)

LET function

The LET function assigns names to calculation results. This allows storing intermediate calculations, values, or defining names inside a formula.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (28)

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What's new in Office 2021 (29)

XMATCH function

The XMATCH function searches for a specified item in an array or range of cells, and then returns the item's relative position. You can also use XMATCH to return a value in an array.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (30)

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What's new in Office 2021 (31)

Sheet views

Create customized views in an Excel worksheet without disrupting others.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (32)

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Note: Sheet views are not available in Excel LTSC 2021.

What's new in Office 2021 (33)

Accessibility ribbon

The Accessibility ribbon puts all the tools you need to create accessible content in one place.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (34)

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Note: The Accessibility ribbon is not available in Excel LTSC 2021.

What's new in Office 2021 (35)

New and improved Record Slide Show

Record Slide Show now supports presenter video recording, ink recording and laser pointer recording.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (36)

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What's new in Office 2021 (37)

Ink Replay - Slide Animation for Ink object

Now you can apply the new Replay or Rewind animation to ink and get the drawing effect directly in your presentations. You can adjust the timing of these animations to be faster or slower to match the experience you want.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (38)

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What's new in Office 2021 (39)

Arrange elements on your slides for screen readers

See the elements in screen-reading order and re-arrange them as necessary to communicate your message effectively.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (40)

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What's new in Office 2021 (41)

Link to a slide

Ask a colleague to contribute to your slide deck, and start them directly on the slide you need help with.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (42)

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Note: Link to a slide is not available in PowerPoint LTSC 2021.

What's new in Office 2021 (43)

Translator and ink in Outlook

Translate email messages into more than 70 languages on the fly and view the transcript—all within Outlook.

Annotate email images or draw in a separate canvas using your finger, pen, or mouse.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (44)

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What's new in Office 2021 (45)

In Outlook, use Instant Search to quickly find emails

Select the search bar (located above the Outlook ribbon) to help find email messages anywhere in Outlook.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (46)

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What's new in Office 2021 (47)

Reduce eye strain with Dark Mode

Previously, you could use Word with a dark ribbon and toolbars, but your document color stayed bright white. Now, Dark Mode in Word offers a dark canvas as well.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (48)

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What's new in Office 2021 (49)

Improve comprehension with Line Focus

Move through a document in Word, line by line, without distractions. Adjust the focus to put one, three, or five lines in view at a time.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (50)

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What's new in Office 2021 (51)

See what’s new in stock media

We’re constantly adding more rich media content to the Microsoft 365Premium Creative Content collection, a curated library of stock images, icons, and more that helps you express yourself.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (52) What's new in Office 2021 (53) What's new in Office 2021 (54) What's new in Office 2021 (55) What's new in Office 2021 (56)

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What's new in Office 2021 (57)

Find what you need with Microsoft Search

At the top of yourMicrosoft 365apps on Windows you'll find the new Microsoft Search box. This powerful tool helps you quickly find what you're looking for, from text to commands to help and more.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (58) What's new in Office 2021 (59) What's new in Office 2021 (60) What's new in Office 2021 (61) What's new in Office 2021 (62)

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What's new in Office 2021 (63)

Increase the reach of your content

Accessibility Checker keeps an eye on your documents and tells you in the status bar when it finds something you should look at. Try it by clicking Review > Check Accessibility.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (64) What's new in Office 2021 (65) What's new in Office 2021 (66)

What's new in Office 2021 (67)

Performance improvements

Experience improved performance, stability, and speed across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook​.

Get faster calculations from common Excel functions like SUMIF, COUNTIF, and AVERAGEIF.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (68) What's new in Office 2021 (69) What's new in Office 2021 (70) What's new in Office 2021 (71)

What's new in Office 2021 (72)

Updated Draw tab

Quickly access and change the color of all your inking tools in one place.

Simplify how you work with ink using new Draw tab additions: Point Eraser, Ruler, and Lasso.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (73) What's new in Office 2021 (74) What's new in Office 2021 (75)

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What's new in Office 2021 (76)

Save your changes as they happen

Upload your files to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online to make sure all your updates are saved automatically.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (77) What's new in Office 2021 (78) What's new in Office 2021 (79)

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What's new in Office 2021 (80)

Support for OpenDocument format (ODF) 1.3

We now include support for the OpenDocument format (ODF) 1.3. The ODF 1.3 specification adds support for many new features.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (81) What's new in Office 2021 (82) What's new in Office 2021 (83)

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What's new in Office 2021 (84)

Refresh, relink, or remove linked tables

The updated Linked Table Manager is a central location for viewing and managing all data sources and linked tables in an Access database. See all the improvements we've made to the Linked Table Manager based on your feedback.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (85)

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What's new in Office 2021 (86)

Try the new the Date/Time Extended data type in Access

To enhance syntax compatibility with SQL andto increase accuracy and level of detail in records that include dates and times, we’veimplementedthe SQL DateTime2 data type into Access.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (87)

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What's new in Office 2021 (88)

Keeptabsonyourdatabaseobjects in Access

You can clearly see the active tab, easily drag tabs to rearrange them, and close database objects with just one click.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (89)

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What's new in Office 2021 (90)

New Azure stencils and shapes in Visio

We've added many more stencils to help you create up-to-date Azure diagrams.You can use these new stencils to build Azure diagrams for network topologies, virtual machine configurations, operations, and more.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (91)

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What's new in Office 2021 (92)

New AWS stencils and shapes in Visio

We have enabled infrastructure shapes from another major cloud provider: Amazon Web Services (AWS). You cannow use stencils with the latest AWS shapes to help you create diagrams.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (93)

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What's new in Office 2021 (94)

Content for social distancing planning in the workplace

Many workplaces need to be re-planned to follow the social distancing guidelines in force. This new Visio template, and the Workplace Social Distancing stencil, provide a number of shapes, fill patterns and line patterns, both scaled and unscaled, to help with this process.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (95)

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What's new in Office 2021 (96)

Try the Sketched style outline

You can give a casual, hand-drawn look to shapes in your presentations with the Sketched style outline.

Try out the Curved, Freehand, or Scribble options under Format Shape > Line > Sketched style.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (97) What's new in Office 2021 (98) What's new in Office 2021 (99)

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What's new in Office 2021 (100)

Pick the perfect color

Based on your feedback, we’ve added a new input field in the Colors dialog for Hex color values. Now you won't have to spend time converting Hex color values into RGB values.

For any property where you can define a color, you can now enter a Hex color value in the Hex box, for example, #0F4C81 or 444.

New in:

What's new in Office 2021 (101) What's new in Office 2021 (102) What's new in Office 2021 (103) What's new in Office 2021 (104) What's new in Office 2021 (105)

What's new in Office 2021 (106) What's new in Office 2021 (107) What's new in Office 2021 (108) What's new in Office 2021 (109)

What's new in your favorite Microsoft 365 app

What's new in Office 2021 (112)
What's new in Office 2021 (115)What's new in Office 2021 (116)
What's new in Office 2021 (119)

Co-author documents

With real-time co-authoring, you can work with others in the same document at the same time. There’s no need to send extra notes or emails because everyone will be notified when a file is updated.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (120) What's new in Office 2021 (121) What's new in Office 2021 (122)

LEARN MORE

Note: Co-authoring is not available in Office LTSC 2021 for Mac.

What's new in Office 2021 (123)

Better collaboration with modern comments

Have control of when you send comments to your co-authors and be productive with a consistent commenting experience between Excel and PowerPoint.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (124) What's new in Office 2021 (125)

LEARN MORE

Note: Modern comments is not available in Office LTSC 2021 for Mac.

What's new in Office 2021 (126)

Know who's in your document

See who else is working along with youand where they are in the document. You'llfind this experience in Excel and PowerPoint.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (127) What's new in Office 2021 (128)

Note: This feature is not available in Office LTSC 2021 for Mac.

What's new in Office 2021 (129)

Save your changes as they happen

Upload your files to OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online to make sure all your updates are saved automatically.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (130) What's new in Office 2021 (131) What's new in Office 2021 (132)

LEARN MORE

Note: This feature is not available in Office LTSC 2021 for Mac.

What's new in Office 2021 (133)

Sheet views

Create customized views in an Excel worksheet without disrupting others.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (134)

LEARN MORE

Note: Sheet views are not available in Excel LTSC 2021 for Mac.

What's new in Office 2021 (135)

Look left, look right… XLOOKUP is here!

Row by row, find anything you need in a table or range with XLOOKUP.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (136)

LEARN MORE

What's new in Office 2021 (137)

Dynamic arrays

Write one formula and return an array of values.Expedite calculations and insights with six ​
more new functions: FILTER, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE, and RANDARRAY.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (138)

LEARN MORE

What's new in Office 2021 (139)

LET function

The LET function assigns names to calculation results. This allows storing intermediate calculations, values, or defining names inside a formula.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (140)

LEARN MORE

What's new in Office 2021 (141)

XMATCH function

The XMATCH function searches for a specified item in an array or range of cells, and then returns the item's relative position. You can also use XMATCH to return a value in an array.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (142)

LEARN MORE

What's new in Office 2021 (143)

Watch your formulas

Watch cells across multiple sheets and books in a single pane or window.

The Watch Window makes it convenient to inspect, audit, or confirm formula calculations and results in large worksheets.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (144)

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What's new in Office 2021 (145)

Reduce eye strain with Dark Mode

Previously, you could use Word with a dark ribbon and toolbars, but your document color stayed bright white. Now, Dark Mode in Word offers a dark canvas as well.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (146)

LEARN MORE

What's new in Office 2021 (147)

Immersive Reader advanced color support

In Immersive Reader, we've added many additional ways you can choose a page color. Selecting a page color can make text easy to scan with less eye strain.

On the Immersive Reader tab click Page Color to see a 4x5 color picker.

Click More Colors to see additional color selection optionssuch asWheel, Sliders, Color Palettes, Image Palettes, and Pencils.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (148)

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What's new in Office 2021 (149)

Natural-sounding voices with Read Aloud

The Read Aloud feature in Word's Immersive Readeris great for authors and readers alike. Whether you use it to “prooflisten” a document or an email you’ve drafted to catch errors, or simply to give your eyes a break, Read Aloud now features more natural-sounding voices for an improved listening experience.

To access the feature, click the Read Aloud button on the Review tab.

To switch between different voice options, select the Settings icon at the upper-right corner of your message or document and click the Voice Selection drop-down menu.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (150)

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What's new in Office 2021 (151)

Ink Replay - Slide Animation for Ink object

Now you can apply the new Replay or Rewind animation to ink and get the drawing effect directly in your presentations. You can adjust the timing of these animations to be faster or slower to match the experience you want.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (152)

LEARN MORE

What's new in Office 2021 (153)

Make an animated GIF from a slide show

You can now save a presentation as an animated GIF which can be shared via social or other digital channels.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (154)

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What's new in Office 2021 (155)

Visual refresh

Work with a modernized Start experience and newly refreshed tabs in the ribbon.

Experience a clean, clear style with monoline iconography that communicates action and features with simple visuals.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (156) What's new in Office 2021 (157) What's new in Office 2021 (158) What's new in Office 2021 (159)

What's new in Office 2021 (160)

See what’s new in stock media

We’re constantly adding more rich media content to the Microsoft 365Premium Creative Content collection, a curated library of stock images, icons, and more that helps you express yourself.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (161) What's new in Office 2021 (162) What's new in Office 2021 (163)

LEARN MORE

What's new in Office 2021 (164)

Find what you're looking for

Use the search box to find text, commands, help, and more.

Tell me is a text field where you can enter words and phrases about what you want to do next, and quickly get to features you want to use or actions you want to perform.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (165) What's new in Office 2021 (166) What's new in Office 2021 (167)

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What's new in Office 2021 (168)

Performance improvements

Experience improved performance, stability, and speed across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook​.

Get faster calculations from common Excel functions like SUMIF, COUNTIF, and AVERAGEIF.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (169) What's new in Office 2021 (170) What's new in Office 2021 (171) What's new in Office 2021 (172)

What's new in Office 2021 (173)

Save as SVG for your pictures and graphics

We now support saving pictures, charts, and other graphics from your documents in theSVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) format.

Your saved images can be resized with no loss of image quality.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (174) What's new in Office 2021 (175) What's new in Office 2021 (176) What's new in Office 2021 (177)

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What's new in Office 2021 (178)

Try the Sketched style outline

You can give a casual, hand-drawn look to shapes in your presentations with the Sketched style outline.

Try out the Curved, Freehand, or Scribble options under Format Shape > Line > Sketched style.

New in: What's new in Office 2021 (179) What's new in Office 2021 (180) What's new in Office 2021 (181)

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What's new in your favorite Microsoft 365for Mac app

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What's new in Office 2021 (2024)

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