Microsoft Office 2021 will launch on October 5th 2021

Microsoft is launching its next permanent version of Microsoft Office for business customers today, and is promising an Office 2021 consumer release on October 5. Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for Windows and Mac will be available to commercial and government users today, providing Office with a lock-in time release that doesn't require a subscription.

Office LTSC is designed for businesses in regulated industries where processes and apps may not change on a monthly basis, or for manufacturing plants that rely on Office and want to release lock-in times. It won't ship with the AI- and cloud-powered features found in Microsoft 365, and it won't receive new features either. Microsoft will support Office LTSC for five years, and the company is also committed to a more permanent version of Office for the foreseeable future.

The Consumer Office 2021 Perpetual release will be very similar, offering a lock-in time release without feature updates. Microsoft lists the following additions to Office LTSC, which should also apply to Office 2021:

Line Focus - Similar to a reading mode to remove distraction and go line by line through Word documents.

XLOOKUP Function - Helps to find items in an Excel worksheet by a table or range.

Dynamic Array Support - New functions in Excel that use dynamic arrays.

Dark Mode – Dark Mode support will be included in all Office apps.

Microsoft still, naturally, recommends Microsoft 365 for both businesses and consumers, where the company has over 300 million paid seats for Office 365 on the business side. Microsoft recently announced its first price increases for both Microsoft 365 and Office 365 that will take effect in March 2022.

Microsoft hasn't revealed detailed pricing for Office 2021 yet, but the company says it will be generally available on October 5, the same day Windows 11 launches. More details about Office 2021 features and pricing will be provided soon.