The latest release of Microsoft Office includes plenty of interesting enhancements and improvements across all its components. Which in this version, Home and Business, includes a 1-PC/Mac lifetime licence, designed for people working from home or on their laptop, and suitable for commercial use.

Word 2024 is the defacto word processor and the latest version enables you to insert images from all sources, including a mobile phone, support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.4 and give quick Like's to comments. The previous Word 2021, if you hadn't moved up from Office 2019, added features such as protecting your untrusted documents (any you've just downloaded, say) in a sandbox, where malicious code can't interfere with your settings. It's easy to apply a range of visual effects to text, new SmartArt graphics help build impressive diagrams, and you can edit pictures from within Word, no further software required.

Excel 2024 gains new text array functions, a new image function so you can add pull images into your sheet from various sources, and is generally faster. If you didn't move up to Excel 2021 yet, that version brought us several visualisation tools: Sparklines displays small graphs in single cells, while the Slicer helps filter pivot tables to display precisely the data you need. But if you need industrial-strength analytical capabilities, then the new PowerPivot for Excel add-in makes it easy to work with information from many different sources, and can handle datasets with millions of rows.

Outlook 2024 i ncludes an improved search function and additional options for creating a meetin, whilst if you didn't move upto Outlook, 2021, that included revamped navigation, like the Conversation view, which shows you an entire threaded conversation at a click. The new Quick Steps work as simple macros, carrying out multiple Outlook actions at a click. And you're now able to email your calendar to contacts, making it easy for them to fit in with your busy schedule.

Elsewhere, PowerPoint 2024 includes the function to record live camera content straight into your slide,  export your slides as a video, and adds closed captions for audio and video. The previous PowerPoint 2021, if you didn't move up, added the ability to broadcast presentations across any network. There's support for collaborative working, allowing multiple authors to work on the same Word and PowerPoint documents. And once saved online, you can continue to work on your Office 2021 documents just about anywhere through Microsoft Web Apps, on PCs, laptops or even smartphones.

New in Office 2024 is the launch of a new default Office theme based on the Fluent Design principles, improved accessibility tools, improved draw and editing features across the board and more shapes, stencils and templates. See the "What's New in Office 2024" on the Microsoft website for detailed information.

Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business includes a 1-PC or 1-Mac lifetime licence for one person to use on a single PC or Mac anywhere and for commercial use. Unlike Microsoft 365, Office 2024 will never need renewing.

Review by Mike Williams.