Microsoft Office 2024 Now Available in India With No Subscription Cost

Microsoft has released a new major non-subscription version of its Office suite for the first time since 2021. The new Office 2024 is now available for a one-time purchase in India. The Home edition, which includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, is priced at Rs. 9,199 including GST ($149.99 in the US) while the Home & Business edition will cost Rs. 27,999 and includes all the same apps plus Microsoft Outlook, along with commercial usage rights.

While there will be no recurring subscription cost, buyers still need to link a Microsoft Office 2024 licence to an active Microsoft account, and Internet connectivity is required. After purchase, each Office licence can be installed on one PC or Mac. Office 2024 requires Windows 10 (as long as it is officially supported) or 11, or any of the last three versions of macOS (rolling).

The updates to Microsoft Office apps are relatively minor, bringing them in line with what Microsoft 365 subscribers get. Notably, there’s no mention of Microsoft Copilot AI enhancements on the product's website. All the apps have been given a visual overhaul in line with Microsoft’s Fluent Design principles. New accessibility tools across the suite make it easy to ensure documents can be handled easily by their intended recipients, fixing issues such as low contrast and adding alternative text for images. Video and audio in presentations can now have closed captions.

Images can now be placed directly into documents from Android devices. Emoji reactions are supported for comments in documents. Excel can now handle images in each cell, while OneNote gets a new full-screen inking UI. Speed and stability have also been improved across all apps, and Word can now recover and reopen all documents after a crash or unexpected PC restart.

Microsoft Excel gets a number of new data handling and presentation options such as dynamic arrays in charts to help visualise data, and 14 new functions for processing text and arrays. PowerPoint users will be able to embed live video streams, and pre-record entire presentations with narrations and highlights as shareable video files. Outlook gets an improved search function.  

Unlike the subscription-based Microsoft 365, buyers will not get major feature updates periodically. Bug fixes and security updates will be issued till 2029. They will also not get 1TB of OneDrive storage space per user or bundled Skype minutes for calling. Some real-time online collaboration features are not available. The apps also cannot be used on smartphones or tablets, and buyers don’t get customer support via phone or chat. Interestingly, Microsoft has committed to at least one more non-subscription Office release in the future.