With Microsoft Office 2021 available (release date: Oct. 5, 2021), many of you may be asking if you should upgrade your current Office suite.
First, let’s take a look at some of the new, notable features in Microsoft’s Suite:
- Within Microsoft PowerPoint, the Record Slide Show feature now supports presenter video recording, ink recording, and laser pointer recording.
- In Microsoft Word, Dark Mode offers a dark canvas, too, and not just a dark ribbon and toolbar.
- At the top of your Microsoft Office apps on Windows, you’ll find the new Microsoft Search box.
There are a few other features we’ll talk about later in the article.
Of course, anyone already utilizing the Office apps as part of their Microsoft Office 365 subscription won’t need to upgrade since the subscription service provides for updates and upgrades already; those updates and upgrades happen automatically.
But if you’ve paid for the full Microsoft Office Suite, you’ll have to pay for the new version.
There are a few scenarios to consider when making this decision.
Scenario 1: Using the same MS Office Suite since Windows XP
If you are still working on the same Office Suite you’ve had since Windows XP… then yes, you need to upgrade now. The security features alone make this a no-brainer even if you use only the most basic features of Office.
If you are only using the basic functionality of Office, you should also strongly consider the Online Apps in the basic Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions. These have come a long way and work quite well these days.
Scenario 2: Paying for email via Office 365 and an older MS Office Suite won’t connect
Let’s say you currently pay for email only through Office 365 and your older Office Suite (2010, 2013) won’t connect to your account. Microsoft stopped supporting (ahem, broke) connections from Office 2013 and older versions to Office 365 in October of 2020.
Unless you only use the basic features of the core Microsoft Office apps (Excel, Word) and use Outlook Web Access instead of Outlook, this alone makes this decision easy.
You will want to upgrade to improve productivity and security. If you are comfortable working in the browser versions of Outlook, Word, and Excel, you should simply uninstall your older versions of Office and use those instead.
Scenario 3: Using Office 2016 or 2019
If you’re currently using Office 2016 or 2019… then, maybe or maybe not… it depends. This upgrade is an incremental upgrade and not a major overhaul. The changes to the interface are minor, so the learning curve to get up to speed with this version is fairly short.
Some of the new performance improvements, like the changes to Excel that allow formulas to quickly provide an array of values, functions that return relative positions, XLOOKUP updates, and others, will never be noticed by the average user.
The new suite does introduce better collaboration features such as co-authoring documents in real-time (this is already available with the browser-based versions). Outlook has improved the Search functionality and Powerpoint has improvements that allow for collaborative slide editing.
In a nutshell, if you have an old version and are averse to using the online apps, then you should upgrade. If you are happy with your 2016 or 2019 Office suite, then sit tight. Of course, if you are on the subscription, you already have the newer features.
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