Microsoft last week released a new version of Microsoft Office 2021, its venerable, standalone — and non-cloud-based — software suite of productivity products that we have known for many decades. In the last few years, Microsoft has been leaning more toward pushing its cloud-based, software-as-a-service Microsoft 365 offering as a way for businesses to leverage the power of cloud computing and collaboration. Many people had even started speculating on the future of traditional desktop office software. But this announcement marks a slight deviation from this stand, as it signals Microsoft’s intent to focus on both product lines independently to give businesses the option to choose the one that works best for them — at least for now.
In particular, Microsoft Office 2021 is designed for a work-from-anywhere culture. It enables users to co-author and collaborate on the same document without having to send notes or emails about the updates.
It also comes with better search capabilities, compatibility with Open Document Format (ODF) 1.3, auto-save, and appealing UX elements for improved productivity and efficiency.
Here’s a look at all the features in this version of Microsoft Office 2021.
Collaboration and co-authoring in Microsoft Office 2021
You can co-author a document with colleagues and collaborate with them in real-time through your desktop app. Simply save your files in OneDrive or SharePoint, open your document, select “Share” at the top right-hand corner, and enter the email addresses of the people you want to collaborate with.
You can even add a short message if you like before sending it to the recipients.
They can open the document and, based on the privileges, can view, edit, or comment.
Comment anchoring is another new feature in Microsoft Office 2021. This tool anchors comments to an object, so when you move the object, the comment moves with it. This feature helps to organize your content quickly.
So, how does comment anchoring work?
Select an object on a PowerPoint slide, click the Review menu, and “Comment” or “@Mention” to tag one or more people to it. Now, you can move this comment anywhere on the slide to give others a better context.
The same works for a specific range of text on Word documents as well.
Note that the “@Mention” feature is available only in the Business edition, and an email is sent to the person mentioned.
You can also turn off the comments option at any time, mark them as resolved, reply to the comment, and more.
Advanced features in Excel
Microsoft has added a ton of advanced features to Excel, and rightly so, as more than 81 percent of businesses use Excel for their everyday computations. Also, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has proclaimed that Excel is his company’s most important consumer product!
So, what are its new features?
XLOOKUP
As the name suggests, this feature helps find any content within a table or just a row range.
This search function returns the first match it finds, and if there’s no match, it returns the closest match. The syntax is:
XLOOKUP(lookup_value, lookup_array, return_array, [if_not_found], [match_mode], [search_mode]).
Here:
- Lookup_value is the value you want to search. For example, an employee’s name or ID in an Excel sheet. If you leave this value blank, it returns the first blank cell in the lookup_array.
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Source: https://techgenix.com/whats-new-in-microsoft-office-2021/