Microsoft Introduces Previews of Office 2021 for Mac and Office LTSC

Microsoft has started public previews for Office 2021 Long Term Servicing Channel for Windows and Office 2021 for macOS. The release versions of these Office versions that do not require subscriptions are due this year.

The Office 2021 LTSC preview announced by Microsoft is not for home users but for organizations considering purchasing a volume license for the office suite. In addition to Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021, the preview also includes Project Professional 2021 and Visio Professional 2021. In turn, Office LTSC Professional 2021 includes Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Skype for Business, Teams and Word. The release version of the package should be sold separately later this year, so not as part of a subscription such as Office 365. Microsoft will then support it for five years.

Office 2021 for Mac should also be released this year. Office 2021 Standard for Mac consists of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive and Teams and organizations can use the preview to test the office suite. On January 17, 2022, the preview activation key will expire, after which the suite will only run in reduced mode. Users can then no longer edit or create new documents.

The preview of Office 2021 Standard for Mac runs natively on both Mac systems with an Apple M1 soc and on systems with an Intel processor. Additionally, macOS Big Sur 11, Catalina 10.15, or macOS Mojave 10.14 is required. Microsoft will announce the exact details of the improvements over Office for Mac 2019 at a later date. For now, the company only mentions the addition of Line Focus to Word, an Xlookup and Dynamic array function in Excel and the ability to record slideshows with speech in PowerPoint.

Microsoft announced in February that standalone versions of Office for Windows and macOS will be released this year.