Microsoft Corp. has shared early details about the next release of Office, which will bring an upgraded interface, new features that will allow users to manipulate data in Excel more flexibly and other changes.

Office 2021, as the release is called, was detailed on Thursday. It’s a separate product from the cloud-based version of Microsoft’s productivity suite, which is called Microsoft 365. They both include the same core applications, but Office is available as a onetime purchase, whereas Microsoft 365 is sold under a subscription-based pricing model.

Office 2021 will bring performance improvements to the suite’s applications. There will also be new accessibility features, which Microsoft hasn’t announced in detail yet, as well a dark mode in Word. The mode can save power when users are running Office on a laptop and reduce screen glare in low-light conditions.

Microsoft has shared little information about the enhancements that the release will introduce for other Office applications. But the company did tell The Verge that Excel is set to receive two new features designed to make working with spreadsheets easier. 

The first, called dynamic arrays, will complement Excel’s data analytics capabilities. The spreadsheet editor has a large set of ready-made formulas that can be used for tasks such as calculating the last two years’ average quarterly revenue. Usually, the output of a formula is compressed into a single spreadsheet cell, which can create formatting issues for complex business calculations that return multiple results. Dynamic arrays automatically organizes results into separate cells to save time.

Excel is also receiving a feature Microsoft calls XLOOKUP, which makes it possible to search for data in a single spreadsheet row instead of sifting through the entire spreadsheet. That’s useful in complex documents that contain a large number of similar items. For example, a user can locate the row containing the name of a car part and then use XLOOKUP to quickly jump to the cell in the same row that contains the part’s price. 

The biggest difference between Office and Microsoft 365 outside the pricing model is their intended use. Office is usually deployed on employee devices that don’t have steady internet access and can’t make the most out of Microsoft 365’s cloud features.

For example, a computer used to control manufacturing equipment in a plant might run on an isolated network because of security concerns. There are also companies that simply prefer buying Office licenses with a onetime purchase over subscribing to Microsoft 365.

Office 2021 will be available in multiple versions. The versions for consumers and small businesses are set to release at the same price as the current Office release, while the versions targeting larger organizations will cost 10% more. 

Another change affecting business customers: Microsoft will support Office 2021 for five years instead of seven as with previous releases. That means customers will have to upgrade sooner to keep receiving software updates.

Office 2021 is scheduled to become generally available later this year. Jared Spataro, the corporate vice president for the Microsoft 365 division, added in a blog post that the company plans to launch the next iteration of the suite during the second half of 2022.  

Photo: Microsoft