In a long awaited move, Microsoft has released Office 2024 for Mac and PC and the good news is, you can buy it as a one time purchase.
Previously, buying Office 2021 was the only way to get a standalone version of Office but now you can buy the latest version of Office 2024 as a one time purchase too without having to subscribe to Microsoft 365.
Office 2024 Pricing
Even better news is that the price remains the same as the standalone desktop version of Office 2021.
Microsoft Office Home 2024 is $149.99 (£119.99) and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Microsoft Office Home & Business 2024 costs $249.99 (£249.99) and includes Outlook plus a commercial use license.
The best deals we’ve seen are currently on Amazon where the Home & Business version is offering 8% off at the time of writing.
One license is only valid for installation on one Mac.
Both versions of Office 2024 will run in either Windows 10 or Windows 11 if you also wanted to run the Windows version in a virtual machine on your Mac (although note that Apple Silicon Macs require Windows 11 to run it).
At the moment it’s not clear if it will be available on the Mac App Store although this seems unlikely as the standalone version of Office 2021 never has been.
Microsoft Office 2024 Improvements
These standalone versions of Office are “locked-in-time” which means they will not receive product and feature updates although will get security updates.
The Mac system requirements for Microsoft Office 2024 are the three most recent versions of macOS (Sequoia, Sonoma and Ventura), Intel or Apple Silicon processor, 4GB of RAM and at least 10GB of hard drive space.
The Mac version of Office 2024 fully supports macOS Sequoia and also includes some usability improvements including:
- Faster performance in Excel when working with multiple workbooks
- Outlook for Mac now supports customizable swipe gestures compatible with Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse.
Other improvements in Office 2024 for both Mac and PC include:
- PowerPoint: New “cameo” feature allowing you to embed a live camera feed into slides. It also now has a “recording studio” to add richer narration, animations and transitions.
- Word & PowerPoint: Both now support linking and adding reactions to documents.
- OneNote: Enhanced inking experience including full-screen pen view.
- Word, Excel & PowerPoint: Now all support the OpenDocument format (ODF) making it easier to import and edit documents created in alternatives to Office for Mac.
- Outlook: Mailbox search improvements for better accuracy.
- Excel: New features to support inserting images. Ability to visualize different datasets with dynamic arrays.
You can read the full announcement from Microsoft here.
