For anyone suffering from subscription fatigue, Microsoft is offering a bit of respite with a stand-alone version of its productivity suite, Office 2024.
This week, Microsoft will release Office 2024 starting at a one-time payment of $149.99 for anyone interested in the most up to date but time-locked versions of Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word. While a $149.99 price tag might be enticing for some, that number excludes the most important app from the cavalcade of experiences in Outlook. To include Outlook in the package, customers are now looking at $249.99 under the Home and Business branding. The hike in price is not to simply gain access to Outlook, customers willing to pay $250 will also gain the right to use this version for more commercial interest down the line.
The last time Microsoft offered a no-strings-attached version of Office was back in 2021 and was also feature-locked up until the time of release. The new Office 2024 will include most of the up-to-date features, improvements, and accessibility changes that are present in the Office 365 subscription variant.
For both Mac and Windows customers who are jumping from Office 2021 to Office 2024, Microsoft has been working a several design changes in the core suite that include a bit of retooling of its fluent design in the Ribbon of each app as well as animations between functions.
Other notable changes will be apparent are the additional functions support in Excel that include text and arrays within worksheets. Excel also gain support of greater Image support via web searches. Prosumer Excel users should also find the Dynamic Arrays features in charts a welcomed bonus thanks to their more automated functionality.
PowerPoint users gain more presentation features with the new cameo insert that allows for video feeds to be inserted into slides with real-time recording. Speaking of recording features, PowerPoint also houses a mini studio for handling various types of recordings that include narration, tutorials, closed captioning, subtitles, animation as well as support for light video editing of transitions, and inking.
While Microsoft shuffles Windows users off to its consumer-grade Outlook progressive web app (PWA), the good ol’ Outlook w/ exchange functionality is present with Office 2024 an features improvement to search, messaging, attachments, calendar, and contacts.
Microsoft also tailored a specific Mac gesture into Outlook that supports swiping, both left and right, for managing inboxes.
Microsoft is also adding a sort of crash detection feature into Word that should safeguard writers if a system goes down before a save process is initiated. After a restart of the system of Word app, previously opened docs will be reopened. However, if you still prefer a 3rd party writing app, Microsoft is also supporting OpenDocument format (ODF) up to version 1.4 as well as image support for cross platform exchange between Android and Windows.
Just because it is a stand-alone and feature-locked version of Office, Office 2024 still requires a brief internet connection to activate the license, link previous Microsoft account activity, and collect security updates.
However, beyond the initial set up process, customers can forego the rest out of convenience and privacy while still getting most of the recent developments from the Office team.
