Microsoft Office’s next-gen version is launching for commercial customers today. The Redmond-based company has also promised an October 5 release date for the consumer release of Office 2021.

Microsoft has also made the Microsoft Office Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) for Windows and macOS available to the general public. For the uninitiated, it is an enterprise-focused version of Office 2021 that is offered to volume-licensed commercial and government clients.

The special long-term support version is best suited for businesses where processes and apps can’t change on a monthly basis, or regulated industries. It doesn’t ship with the various bleeding-edge AI and cloud-powered features that are found on Microsoft 365 and won’t be receiving any new features either. Microsoft will be committed to supporting Office LTSC for five years and will be releasing another perpetual version of Office in the future.

The consumer version of the Office 2021 perpetual release will be very similar and will offer a locked-in release time without feature updates as well. Microsoft has listed multiple additions to Office LTSC that should also apply to Office 2021. These include Line Focus that’s basically a reading mode, XLOOKUP function for finding things in a table, Dynamic array support, and of course, dark mode support across all Office apps.

Pricing details about Microsoft Office 2021 have not been announced at this moment. Although, Microsoft recently announced its first price hike for both Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft 365 that will be going into effect in March 2022.

The October 5 launch date coincides with the Windows 11 release – Microsoft’s next-gen operating system for PC. The OS will be bringing a number of interface changes at both the system as well as the app levels and will also provide Android apps support, although the latter will not be making it to the initial release.

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