Microsoft has announced the general availability of Office 2019 for Windows and Mac.†Office 2019†is the next on-premises version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Project, Visio, Access, and Publisher.
Office 365†ProPlus, the cloud-connected version of Office, delivers the most productive and most secure Office experience—with the lowest total cost of ownership for deployment and management. However, for customers who aren’t ready for the cloud, Office 2019 provides new features and updates to the on-premises apps for both users and IT professionals. Like Windows Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) releases, Office 2019 provides a set of valuable enhancements for customers who can’t be cloud-connected or receive regular updates.
The new enhancements in Office 2019 are a subset of a long list of features that have been added to†Office 365†ProPlus over the last three years. Office 2019 is a one-time release and won’t receive future feature updates. New features will be added to†Office 365†ProPlus monthly, including innovations in collaboration, artificial intelligence (AI), security, and more.
Office 2019 delivers features across apps to help users create amazing content in less time. In PowerPoint 2019, you can create cinematic presentations with new features like Morph and Zoom. And improved inking features across the apps in Windows—like the roaming pencil case, pressure sensitivity, and tilt effects—allow you to naturally create documents.
Excel 2019 adds powerful new data analysis features, including new formulas and charts and enhancements to PowerPivot.
Word 2019 and Outlook 2019 help you focus on what matters most. Learning Tools, like Read Aloud and Text Spacing, make it easier to engage with your content. Focus Mode blocks out distractions and puts your content front and center. And Focused Inbox moves less important emails out of the way—so you can get straight to taking care of business. For a longer list of the new features in Office 2019, see our†FAQs.
Office 2019 also includes new IT value for enhanced security and streamlined administration. Click-to-Run (C2R), a modern deployment technology, was released in Office 2013, and it’s now used to deploy and update Office across hundreds of millions of devices worldwide.†With Office 2019, the on-premises versions of Office are being moved to C2R to reduce costs and improve security. The advantages of C2R include predictable monthly security updates, up-to-date apps on installation, reduced network consumption through Windows 10 download optimization technology, and an easy upgrade path to†Office 365†ProPlus.†C2R offers the same enterprise-focused management capabilities as Microsoft Installer (MSI) based products and will also support an in-place upgrade when you move†to Office 2019 from older MSI-based products. To learn more, refer to the†Office 2019 Click-to-Run FAQ.
The 2019 release of Office products also includes updates to servers, and in the coming weeks, Exchange Server 2019, Skype for Business Server 2019, SharePoint Server 2019, and Project Server 2019 will be released.
Office 2019 is a valuable update for customers who aren’t yet ready for the cloud. And each time a new on-premises version of Office is released, customers ask if this will be our last. Microsoft is pleased to confirm that they’re committed to another on-premises release in the future. While the cloud offers real benefits in productivity, security, and total cost of ownership, they recognize that each customer is at a different point in their adoption of cloud services. They see the on-premises version of Office as an important part of our commitment to give customers the flexibility they need to move to the cloud at their own pace.
Availability
- Commercial volume license (trusted) customers can access Office 2019 starting today.
- Office 2019 will be available to all customers, consumer and commercial, in the next few weeks.
