Microsoft recently announced that Office 2021 will be launching on October 5th, alongside Windows 11. Today, the company shared a bit more information about the features that will be available in Office 2021, as well as pricing for home and business licenses.

There isn't a whole lot in terms of new features that we didn't already know. Office 2021 is getting a lot of the improvements that have rolled out to Microsoft 365 subscribers over the past three years. Today, Microsoft highlighted that real-time co-authoring will be available in the desktop apps included in Ofice 2021, meaning you can work on the same document with other people, as long as the document is stored on OneDrive. Office 2021 users can even collaborate with Microsoft 365 subscribers, or with users using the web version of the apps.

Another feature that's coming with Office 2021 is a refreshed visual experience that aligns with Windows 11. This was recently released to Windows and Office Insiders, but it makes perfect sense that it would be available for perpetual licenses of Office as well. This way, when Windows 11 and Office 2021 launch, the visual experience will feel much more uniform. This new design also follows the dark or light mode set by Windows, so it all fits well together.

New visual design in Office 2021

As previously announced, Office 2021 also includes the free version of Microsoft Teams, specifically meant for personal use. Teams is incorporated into Windows 11, so this will be more useful for Windows 10 users who don't know about Teams yet.

The biggest news of the day is the pricing information, but it's also nothing unexpected. Office Home and Student 2021 will cost $149.99, the same price as previous releases, and it includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Teams (though the last two apps are free either way). Office Home and Business 2021 costs $249.99, and it includes all of the same apps plus Outlook, as well as the rights to use the apps for business purposes. If you're running Office 2013 or older and you plan to upgrade to Windows 11, you might need to upgrade, since Office 2013 won't be supported by the new OS.