Microsoft Office 2019 will arrive next year

Over at Ignite, Microsoft has announced that Office 2019 will be released next year, the standalone non-subscription version of the productivity suite for those who don’t yet want to commit to the cloud (i.e. Office 365).

Office 2019 will include new (what Microsoft describes as ‘perpetual’) versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, along with Outlook, plus server versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Skype for Business (although the latter is soon to be rolled into Microsoft Teams).

There’s not much detail on the new 2019 spins of these apps just yet, but Microsoft did say to expect better inking features – such as tilt effects and pressure sensitivity – along with new formulae and charts for Excel. PowerPoint will get nifty animation features such as Morph and Zoom.

You can also expect a raft of new features on the IT management front, as well as improvements in overall usability and security, and voice features.

Preview versions of these new Office apps are expected to become available in the middle of next year, with the full release of Office 2019 slated for the second half of 2018.

Outside the cloud

This is something of a surprise given Microsoft’s focus on the cloud (with the famous cloud-first mantra) and the fact that it’s pushing hard with Office 365, but it seems the company is still willing to take into account the needs of traditional Office customers who don’t want to move online.

In a blog post, Microsoft stated: “Office 2019 will be a valuable upgrade for customers who feel that they need to keep some or all of their apps and servers on-premises, and we look forward to sharing more details about the release in the coming months.”