Office 2021: Innovation That Is More Current Than Ever

Office 2021, the most recent evolution of the most famous and widespread office automation suite ever, sees its commercial debut. For many companies in the enterprise environment, the certainty of still being able to count on a version with a permanent license is a valid alternative to the cloud-native offer of Microsoft 365, with the possibility of integrating the two worlds in an increasingly transparent way for the user. 

Office 2021, therefore, makes Microsoft’s 2021 even more memorable, which in addition to Windows 11, has also recently launched the new version of Windows Server, in addition to the Windows 365 service, a cloud computing based on Windows operating system that promises a complete system in the cloud, extremely simplified and scalable for all business situations, with a service model that promises to revolutionize the entire VDI sector.

Many innovations at Microsoft must be simultaneously implemented in those business systems that see stability and operational resilience as a value that always leaps new solutions rather traumatic, although in line with continuity with those currently implemented.

Office 2021 Between The Microsoft 365 Ecosystem And Integration With Third-Party Applications

Office 2021 represents the permanent license version destined to replace its predecessors, Office 2016 and Office 2019, on PCs worldwide, which will see the end of official support on October 14, 2025, a fate shared by Windows 10. Even if the problem is in some ways secondary in the case of Office, the echo of the controversy caused by the lack of support of the new Windows for older configurations cannot be overlooked to guarantee a high level of compatibility during the upgrade from Windows 10.

This choice has not failed to arouse a wave of controversy, as it should soon force companies that use Windows to replace a large part of their hardware. The alternative may indeed be to keep Windows 10. Still, if the end of support date is confirmed for October 2025, corporate IT departments will be forced to consider some rather challenging solutions, including migrating to cloud services like Windows. 365.

It is never easy for Microsoft to choose that everyone agrees, as its operating systems allow the operation of most desktop systems in the world, with very stringent requirements in terms of backward compatibility to ensure the operational continuity of most applications. Supporting outdated systems but perfectly functional to the business applications for which they are implemented can also be very demanding. Office 2021 will be affected by a general facelift that makes it very similar to the graphical interface of Windows 11. 

A logical and coherent choice that shares many features with its counterpart to services, Microsoft 365, including the integration above with Microsoft OneDrive, the proprietary hybrid storage solution and also available in Business version, and Microsoft Teams, the famous collaboration platform capable of supporting many operations, from project sharing to meetings, to webinars, rather than online events and distance learning. Access and support to Office.com online applications are guaranteed. The new standalone version will be available as Office Home and Student 2021 and Office Home and Business 2021.

The New Features Of Office 2021

In addition to native integration with the main collaborative applications from Microsoft, Office 2021 also sees a series of interesting innovations about individual applications, such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive and many others. So let’s see the main features introduced in the various Office 2021 apps, many of which are also present in Office 2021 for Mac.

General features of Microsoft Office 2021

1. Visual update: new Start experience and general modernization of the tabs on the ribbon of the home menu. The icons are arranged on a single line for greater clarity and cleanliness in the general communication of the elements present on the interface (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook)
2. New stock content: new templates and resources to use in projects, included with Office Premium, including images, icons and other elements useful for creating new content (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Visio)
3. Microsoft Search: search tool located at the top of the Office application interface, with new features capable of guaranteeing a more effective and faster search, from the content to the commands of the individual software (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote)
4. General performance improvements: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook have been rewritten to ensure greater performance, stability and speed, which allow you to increase the performance of existing functions (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook);
5. Drawing Tab Update: Improved public interface to access and change the color of all ink tools, starting from a single location. Added new commands, such as dot eraser, ruler and lasso (Word, Excel, PowerPoint);
6. New autosave mode: immediate sync with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online to be sure that you have always saved the most up-to-date version of the work file (Word, Excel, PowerPoint);
7. OpenDocument (ODF) 1.3 format support: including support for ODF 1.3 format, the specification of which adds many new features (Word, Excel, PowerPoint);
8. Freehand style: possibility to provide a ” freehand drawn” aspect in presentations, thanks to the homonymous style, with curved, freehand or scribble options (Word, Excel, PowerPoint);
9. Color selection tool: new input field in the Colors window, with the presence of hexadecimal values, without having to insert the RGB equivalent (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Visio, Publisher, OneNote, Outlook)

Microsoft Excel Exclusive Functions

1. Query: ” line by column” scan instrument for tables and ranges; 
2. Dynamic Matrices: new capacities FILTER, SORT, SORT BY, UNIQUE, SEQUENCE and RANDARRAY to make estimations and bits of knowledge quicker; 
3. LET Function: allot names to estimation results, to store halfway computations or characterize names inside a recipe; 
4. XMATCH Function: looks for the predefined component in an exhibitor scope of cells and returns the component’s relative position. XMATCH can likewise be utilized to return worth in an exhibit;

Microsoft Powerpoint Exclusive Features

1. New presentation recording: upholds video recording with the moderator, recording with ink and laser pointers; 
2. Ink Stroke Playback: Ability to play ink strokes as they are drawn, with the capacity to delay and resume playback; 
3. New slide layout for screen reading: it is feasible to see the components in screen understanding request and orchestrate them again depending on the situation with an extraordinary administration instrument;

Features Unique To Microsoft Outlook

1. Translator and pen input: programmed interpretation into more than 70 dialects ​​and comment ability utilizing mouse or finger and pen on touchscreen frameworks; 
2. An internal search of email messages: further developed hunt on account of cutting edge the board of the pursuit bar, with new email channel choices;

Microsoft Access Unique Features

1. Update, relink or remove linked tables: update the Linked Table Manager apparatus to more effectively see and deal with all information sources and tables connected with Access data sets; 
2. New date/time mode: highlight acquainted with advance the similarity of Access linguistic structure with SQL and work fair and square of detail in records that incorporate date and time, with the new SQL DateTime2.

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