Microsoft Office 2024 is now available for Macs and PCs

Microsoft is releasing a new version of Office this week, designed for people who don’t want to subscribe to Microsoft 365. The standalone release of Microsoft Office 2024 is now available for both consumers and small businesses, and includes locked versions of Microsoft Office 2024. Word , Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook across Mac and PC.

Office 2024 includes many of the updates that Microsoft has been bringing to Microsoft 365 subscribers over the past few years. Microsoft last released a standalone version of Office in 2021, and this new release of Office 2024 includes improvements to core applications, as well as accessibility and UI changes.

Office 2024 has a new default theme, with Microsoft’s latest Fluent Design principles similar to the changes seen in Windows 11. Microsoft has also added accessibility-focused improvements to help Office users find potential accessibility issues in documents, slideshows, workbooks , and emails.

The biggest changes in Office 2024 can be found in Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft has added new functions to Excel to apply text and columns to worksheets, alongside a new IMAGE function that can pull images from the web. Excel 2024 can also now reference Dynamic Arrays in charts, which can be automatically updated rather than modified to set data points. Microsoft says the speed and stability of Excel 2024 should also be improved.

In PowerPoint Microsoft has added a cao feature, which allows you to insert a live camera feed into the slides. PowerPoint also has a new recording feature that includes recording features for narration, animation, transitions, and inking. You can also add captions or subtitles to videos and audio files on slides, making presentations more accessible.

Outlook 2024 includes search improvements to find more relevant results for messages, attachments, contacts, and calendar entries. This latest release of Outlook includes more options for meetings, including the ability to automatically shorten them. Mac users can also customize left and right gestures in Outlook.

In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint you can now easily insert an image from an Android mobile device, and Microsoft also supports version 1.4 of the OpenDocument format (ODF) which includes various new improvements. Word and PowerPoint also include the ability to like and respond to comments on documents.

Word 2024 users will also be able to restore a session if your PC crashes. Word will automatically open all the documents you had open before your PC crashed, you lost power, or Word closed unexpectedly. OneNote 2024 users will also have access to the new ink and drawing experience.

Microsoft says Office 2024 will require a Microsoft account and an Internet connection, but like Office 2021 you’ll only need an Internet connection to install the suite, run it, and get any security updates. Office 2024 will run on Windows 10 and 11 as well as the three latest releases of macOS.

Office 2024 will be available in two different versions. Office Home 2024, priced at $149.99, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for PC or Mac. If you want Outlook, you’ll need to buy the $249.99 Office Home and Business 2024 version, which also includes rights to use the apps for commercial purposes.