Does your company need MS Office software but you’re not sure whether you should go with the latest Office 2021 or opt for the familiar and well-established Office 2019? We have prepared a handy comparison of the main features to help you choose the software that’s most suitable for your organization’s needs.
Office 2019 vs Office 2021
Have a look at the following table to see the comparison of the Professional Plus edition (highly recommended for business customers) of Office 2019 and Office 2021:
| Click on the black triangle next to each property for more details. | ||
| Property | Office 2019 Professional Plus | Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021 |
AppsCompared to Office 2019, the 2021 version reintroduces the OneNote application and adds a well-known, popular messaging app – MS Teams.
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Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Skype for Business | Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Skype for Business, Teams, OneNote |
LanguagesMS Office is available in many languages officially supported by Microsoft.
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same for both: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and many more | |
File formatsWith both Office suites you can save, open, import, export and generally manage files in the same format. They also provide native support for the most commonly used external formats.
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same for both: doc, docx, odt, rtf, pdf, xml, xls, csv, html, pps, ppsx, etc. | |
OS compatibilityBoth Office suites are fully compatible with the two latest Windows operating systems, including server solutions.
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same for both: Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022 | |
End of supportOffice 2019 suite will be receiving bug fixes and security updates until October 2025. Office LTSC 2021 will be supported for only one year longer – up until October 2026.
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October 2025 | October 2026 |
What’s new in Office 2021?
Have a look at the main new features and improvements:
- MS TEAMS: chat client included – the newest Office suite includes the app so you don’t have to download it from the Microsoft Store.
Important: In order to use the business version of MS Teams, purchasing a subscription is still required. - WORD: text predictions – improves writing speed by providing suggestions based on the first few letters of the word that the user is typing.
- EXCEL: dynamic arrays – allows receiving an array of multiple values with a single formula; LET function – speeds up writing complex formulas by assigning names to calculation results.
- POWERPOINT: new and improved Record Slide Show – presenters can now make a video recording of a PowerPoint presentation together with the narration, slide timing, ink gestures and pointer movements.
- OUTLOOK: automated translation – translates email messages into more than 70 languages directly in the email client; the translation is immediately displayed next to the original message in the mailbox.
- Support for OpenDocument format (ODF) 1.3 – provides new levels of compatibility and grants access to many ODF features.
- Visual refresh – brings a more up-to-date look and feel of the most popular Office applications, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Summary
In conclusion, Office 2021 brings a couple of improvements, the most notable of which is probably the inclusion of the MS Teams app in the suite, and a slightly longer lifecycle. In the light of this, you can consider the following options for your company:
Option A: Get Office 2021
If your business needs some of the aforementioned new features together with MS Teams, or you’re interested in that one extra year of support, getting the latest Microsoft Office software for your company is the logical step.
Interested in buying an Office 2021 suite?
Check out our offer in the Office 2021 category!
Option B: Choose Office 2019 over 2021
If your business does not need any of the new features, nor MS Teams, there is simply no point in getting the latest MS Office suite – it has nearly the same features as Office 2019, but a higher price.
Interested in buying an Office 2019 suite?
Check out our offer in the Office 2019 category!
Option C: Get a hybrid solution
If your business needs MS Teams and some of the other Microsoft cloud services as well at a more budget-friendly price, consider investing in a hybrid solution:
Office 2019 Professional Plus + Microsoft 365 Business Basic!
- Office 2019 Professional Plus – provides all the advanced features of a perpetual product for enterprise use, including all classic desktop apps, centralized deployment, Remote Desktop Services compatibility.
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic – adds MS Teams, cloud storage, custom email domain and more to your IT infrastructure.
The combination of these two products will cover your business’ needs similarly to a Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan while reducing your expenses for software significantly – check out the total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison graph below to see how this hybrid solution can be beneficial for your business:
TCO comparison between perpetual, hybrid and subscription solutions over a period of 4 years:
Both the Office 2021 suite and the hybrid solution become cheaper than the Microsoft 365 subscription plan in just one year. Additionally, the hybrid solution has the advantage of a lower initial investment cost than Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021 but actually becomes more expensive after 2 and a half years. And finally, the Office 2019 suite is cheaper than any of the previously mentioned options from the very beginning.