Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft Office 2019 RTM

As promised Microsoft has officially announced the availability of the final version its Office 2019 release for Windows and Mac users. After producing a preview version in the first half of this year, the product has been finalized and is being made available first to enterprise customers with consumer editions available soon after. As is the tradition, Office 2019 includes updated versions of apps from the suite, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access and Publisher. Notably absent is OneNote which has been moved from Office to Windows 10.

Office 2019 includes some of the changes added to the suite of programs in Office 365 over the last 3 years, although some features remain exclusive to subscribers. Besides the core programs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook which are available for both Windows and macOS, 2019 versions of Access and Publisher are also available for Windows-only and included as usual only in the premium higher-end editions of the suite. 2019 versions of Visio and Project for Windows are also being made available although they are not part of any perpetually licensed Office 2019 edition.

Office 2019, like its predecessors is a release with a perpetual license, unlike Office 365 where you keep paying a subscription to use the programs in the suite. Microsoft has announced that it will not be the last perpeptually licensed version of Office, meaning that, for as long as there is demand in the enterprise and from consumers, there will be updated non-subscription versions of Office produced by Microsoft.

Besides client applications, there will also be 2019 server releases of Exchange, SharePoint, Project, and Skype for Business.

Office 2019 will require you to upgrade to Windows 10, as it is not officially supported on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

Also, Microsoft has discontinued releasing MSI packages for their Office client apps starting with this generation of the Office suite. Instead, the apps will be packaged using Click-to-Run technology. Office server products will have MSI installers.

Here are key features of this release.

Common enhancements across all apps in the suite

• Black theme
• SVG and icon support
• Improved inking and pen support, roaming pencil case, pressure sensitivity and tilt effects

Word 2019

• Learning tools, text spacing, voice dictation
• LaTeX syntax for equation editor
• Read aloud
• Improved inking support
• Add icons and SVG graphics, 3D models
• Accessibility Checker improvements

Excel 2019

• Precision cell selection by deselecting extraneous cells
• Major PivotTable enhancements: personalization, automatic relationship detection, time grouping, zoom in and out buttons, Field list search, Smart rename, Multi-select Slicer, Faster OLAP PivotTables, creating, editing, and deleting custom measures, filtering with Timelines
• New data analysis features
• New chart types such as Funnel charts, 2D maps!
• New Excel formulas, functions and connectors
• CSV (UTF-8) support
• Improved access to recent files and folders and workbook version history
• Data Loss Protection (DLP) in Excel
• Publish to Power BI
• Improvements to PowerPivot
• Get & Transform (PowerQuery) improvements
• Insert SVGs, icons and convert them to shapes, insert 3D models
• Improved inking and pen support

PowerPoint 2019

• Morph transition
• Zoom effect to jump to and from specific slides, sections, and portions of your presentations
• Massively improved inking: Record digital inking gestures, richer pens, highlighters, and pencils for inking, ink effects, segment eraser, replay ink drawings, ruler for drawing straight lines in any angle, controlling slide show with pens
• Insert and manage icons, SVG and 3D models, convert SVG icons to shapes
• Improved free-form pencil drawing and marking
• 4K video export

Outlook 2019

• Auto-download of OneDrive attachments
• Ability to see meeting responses
• Focused Inbox
• Voice dictation and read aloud emails
• Adding multiple time zones to your calendar
• Mark emails as read when deleting
• Pop up reminders
• Travel and delivery summary cards, updated contact cards, and @mentions
• Improved Accessibility Checker
• Office 365 Groups support (with Exchange online account)

Access 2019

• 11 new charts to make it easier to understand the data stored in Access forms and reports
• Large Number (bigint) support
• Return of dBASE format importing, linking or export
• Property Sheet sorting for forms and reports
• 'Label Name' property for controls
• Improved ODBC connection retry logic
• Keyboard shortcut for editing list item values (Ctrl+E)
• Accessibility improvements
• New Linked Table Manager
• Salesforce & Dynamics connectors

Visio 2019

• New starter diagrams and templates for Organization Chart, Brainstorming, and SDL
• Built-in Database Modeling
• Creating wireframe visual blueprints
• New UML tools
• Improved AutoCAD format import

Project 2019

• Linking tasks in columns using a drop-down menu
• Task Summary Name field to help clarify your project's overall structure
• Timeline bars with labels and task progress indicator
• Accessibility improvements

As mentioned earlier, many features of Office are now exclusive to subscribers.

Office 2019 will not have:

• Editor and Researcher feature in Word.
• Tap in Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
• PowerPoint Designer
• Ideas and Data Types in Excel.
• Real-time collaboration across Word, Excel and PowerPoint and @mentions.
• Office 365 Message Encryption.
• Advanced Threat Protection in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneDrive for Business
• Office Enterprise Protection.
• Sensitive Label support in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
• Shared computer licensing
• FastTrack options
• Microsoft Intune integration

Office 2019 is the first release in which the 64-bit version is being offered by default. 64-bit Office was available starting with Office 2010 but Microsoft recommended the 32-bit version for compatibility with add-ins.

Office 2019 Official System Requirements

• 1.6 GHz or faster, 2-core processor
• 2.0 GHz or faster recommended for Skype for Business
• 4 GB RAM for 64-bit; 2 GB RAM for 32-bit
• 4.0 GB free disk space
• 1280 x 768 or higher screen resolution
• Windows 10, Windows Server 2019
• Graphics hardware acceleration requires DirectX 9 or later, with WDDM 2.0 or higher for Windows 10
• Internet access is not required. Activation is the same - internet-based or via phone, and KMS or MAK for enterprises.

Note: You cannot install Office 2019 alongside Office 2016. This scenario is not supported.

Microsoft Office 2019 is priced at $249.99 for Home and Business customers.

Office 2019 extended support will end at the same time as Office 2016. Traditionally, Office releases have received 10 years of support however this release is an exception, getting only 7 years of support (5 years mainstream support, 2 years extended).