Office 2021 and 2024 cheat sheet

For decades, Microsoft Office has been the business world’s dominant productivity software suite. If you use word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and email applications, particularly on Windows, those apps are very likely to be Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

In the 2010s, Microsoft began selling the Office suite under two models: the traditionally licensed, “perpetual” version, where you purchase the software and own it forever, and a new subscription-based version where you pay a monthly or annual fee to use the software and receive frequent updates and new feature rollouts. With the perpetual version, you only pay once, but you don’t get new features unless you purchase a later Office version.

Microsoft strongly pushes customers toward the subscription version, initially called Office 365 and now rebranded as Microsoft 365. But the company has continued to release new perpetual versions of the Office suite, typically containing a subset of the features and apps available in Microsoft 365, about once every three years. Many businesses and individuals still prefer the old model and today use either Office 2021 or Office 2024, the two latest perpetual-license releases.

Over these two releases, Microsoft has added or updated several features and tools that enhance the way you work with your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and emails. In this cheat sheet, we go over the most useful new features in the four core Office apps. We’ll start with tips that apply across the Office suite and move on to the individual apps, noting which features are available in Office 2024 but not Office 2021.

Note: This guide refers specifically to the Office 2021 and 2024 desktop apps for Windows. If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, see our separate cheat sheets for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook in M365.

In this article:

Collaborate on documents in real time

Use the modern comments feature effectively

Word: Use Line Focus to concentrate

Excel: Create dynamic arrays and charts

Excel: Create custom-filtered views for a spreadsheet

Excel: Place images in cells with the IMAGE function

PowerPoint: Create internal hyperlinks in a presentation

PowerPoint: Create a video recording of a presentation

PowerPoint: Insert live webcam video into your presentation

PowerPoint: Add captions to video or audio on a slide

Outlook: Find emails quickly with Instant Search

Outlook: Translate emails from and to other languages

Collaborate on documents in real time

The co-authoring feature in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint lets you and your co-workers collaborate on a document simultaneously. In real time, everyone can see all changes being made to the document as they happen.

Co-authoring was available in the Word 2019 desktop app, but Excel and PowerPoint users without a Microsoft 365 subscription had to use the web apps for real-time collaboration. With Office 2021 and 2024, real-time co-authoring is finally available in all three desktop apps.

Save your document in OneDrive

To use co-authoring, your document needs to be stored in OneDrive. If it’s not already, open the document in Excel, PowerPoint, or Word. On the Ribbon toolbar at the top, click the File tab. On the page that appears, select Save a Copy in the left pane. Click on your OneDrive account to open File Explorer, then select a folder in your OneDrive to save the document into.

If your OneDrive account isn’t listed on this page, click Add a Place under “Other locations” and add your OneDrive account.

Share your document

Next, share your document with your co-workers: Click the Share button at the upper right of the screen, and then click Share… on the menu that appears.

On the panel that opens, type in co-workers’ names or email addresses for people in your contacts. Click the pencil icon to set access permissions to your document — whether recipients will be able to edit it or only view it. (Enterprise users may have additional options or restrictions as set by their IT admins.) Add an optional message describing what you’re sharing and click Send. They’ll get an email inviting them to click a link to join in on collaborating on your document.

Sharing a document with co-workers.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Alternatively, on this share panel, you can generate a link to your document that you can then paste elsewhere (e.g., in an email or messaging app). When someone clicks this link, they’ll have access to either edit or view your document.

See others working on your document

When there are multiple people working on a document, each person’s presence is indicated by a flagged cursor that has a color unique to them. At the upper right of the screen, colored circles show the headshots or initials of your co-workers who presently have your document opened.

Three co-workers collaborating live on a Word doc.
Howard Wen / Foundry

If a co-worker is typing or making changes to your document, you’ll see their colored cursor perform these actions in real time.

Use the modern comments feature effectively

The comments feature was updated in Office 2021 with enhancements such as threaded discussions and text formatting options (bold, bullet points, italics, etc.). The user experience is designed to be similar and seamless across the desktop app and web versions of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.

Comments now have threading and text formatting options.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Add a comment

Highlight a passage of text and right-click on it. Or right-click an area in your document, or a cell in a spreadsheet or table, where you want to add a comment. On the menu that opens, click New Comment.

A blank comment card will open. Type in a brief comment and click the right arrow on the lower right of the card to post your comment. A word balloon icon will appear at the appropriate place in the document.

As you’re writing a comment, you can mention a co-worker in it: Type the @ symbol, followed by their name or email address. If they’re in your contacts, a dropdown will appear with suggestions; select their name from the list. Once you’ve posted the comment, they’ll be sent a notification alerting that you’ve mentioned them in it.

View a comment, reply to it, resolve it, or delete it

To see a comment, click its word balloon icon in the document. This opens the comment card associated with it in the right margin. Type in your reply and click the right arrow to post it.

If you click the three-dot icon to the right of the commenter’s name, you can take various actions on the comment, such as copying a link to it, marking the comment thread as resolved, or deleting the thread.

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Howard Wen / Foundry

View and manage all comments in a document

At the top of the screen, click the Review tab, then click the down arrow at the right edge of the Show Comments button on the toolbar. On the menu that opens, clicking Contextual will open all the comment cards in the document, with each card appearing to the right of the comment’s location in the document.

Clicking List opens the Comments pane along the right of the screen with all the comments grouped together at the top. On this pane, you can conveniently scroll through and manage all the comments in the document at once, replying, resolving, or deleting them.

The Comments pane lets you view and manage all the comments in a document at once.
Howard Wen / Foundry

If you click on a comment in the Comments pane, you’ll be taken to its location in the document. You can also click the funnel icon to filter the comments — for example, viewing only the comments that you’re @ mentioned in.

Word: Use Line Focus to concentrate

As you read or edit your document in Word, the Line Focus feature can help you focus better on specific lines of text by eliminating everything around it in your document.

To activate Line Focus, click the View tab at the top. On the toolbar, click Immersive Reader. Then click the Immersive Reader tab that appears to the right of the Help tab. On the toolbar that opens, click Line Focus and select the number of lines of text that you want to focus on.

The lines of text in your document above and below the cursor will dim. To move the visible area up or down, click the up or down arrows along the right of the screen, press the arrow keys on your keyboard, or use your mouse to move the cursor.

The Line Focus feature removes distractions, letting you focus on a few lines of text.
Howard Wen / Foundry

To adjust the readability options to your liking, click the Immersive Reader tab, and on the toolbar that opens, click the Column Width, Page Color, and/or Text Spacing buttons.

Excel: Create dynamic arrays and charts

Dynamic arrays are available in Excel 2021 and 2024. Dynamic charts require Excel 2024.

Traditionally, Excel formulas and functions could return only a single value. If you wanted more values returned from your data, you had to copy the formula into a new cell. But new dynamic arrays let you write one formula and have it return multiple values. Dynamic arrays automatically update and resize themselves when their source data is updated.

In Office 2024, Excel takes dynamic arrays a step further, letting you create dynamic charts based on them.

Set up your data as a table

Enter your data into cells. You should have a column that lists categories and at least one column to its right listing corresponding values. Each column should have a header at the top.

An example: If you’re putting together a budget for a business trip, Column A could list expense items (plane tickets, hotel, car rental, etc.), while Column B could list the cost for each item on the same row.

To turn the data into a table, select the column headers and full range of data in Columns A and B. At the top of the spreadsheet, click the Insert tab and click Table on the toolbar. Click OK.

Put your data in table format.
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Use a dynamic array function on the table

You can use a dynamic array function such as FILTER, SORT, or UNIQUE to create a dynamic array next to your table. These functions allow you to dynamically filter, sort, and manipulate your data in the table.

For our example we’ll use the FILTER function. Enter the following formula into cell D1:

=FILTER(A2:B9, B2:B9 < 2000)

This creates a new data range that lists items from column A (“A2:A9” means column A, rows 2 to 9) where the corresponding costs in Column B (“B2:B9”) are below $2,000 (“2000”).

The FILTER function created a data array showing only the items with costs below $2,000.Howard Wen / Foundry

Even though the formula lives only in cell D1, the dynamic array it produces spills over into cells D1 through E6. If the source data changes — for instance, if you add a new item that costs less than $2,000 to the original table, or reduce the cost of an existing item to less than $2,000 — the dynamic array automatically updates and resizes itself to accommodate the changes. Because of this, the dynamic array is always up to date.

Similarly, you can use the SORT function to sort selected data and the UNIQUE function to remove duplicates, with the resulting arrays automatically updating when the source data is changed. (You can read about more ways to use the FILTER, SORT, and UNIQUE functions from Microsoft support.)

Create a dynamic chart from your dynamic array

Select the cells containing the dynamic array that you want to use to generate a chart. At the top of your spreadsheet, click the Insert tab and select a chart type (Column, Line, Pie, Bar, etc.) on the ribbon toolbar. Excel 2024 will generate the chart.

Creating a chart from a dynamic array in Excel 2024.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Changes made to the original table data that update the dynamic array will also be reflected in the dynamic chart automatically.

To customize the appearance of your chart, click on the chart to select it. At the top of your spreadsheet, select the Chart Design tab. You can then add a title to your chart, adjust its axes, or change its colors. For more about working with charts in Excel, see our charts and sparklines tutorial.

Excel: Create custom-filtered views for a spreadsheet

Using Excel’s Sheet Views feature, you can create a copy of a sheet and then apply filtered or sorted views of the data to the duplicate sheet. This can be helpful when you’re collaborating on a spreadsheet, where someone would like to create a customized view without altering the original sheet.

You and your collaborators can create several such custom-filtered/sorted views for a sheet. Then each person can select among them, switching from one view to another.

Note: In order for this feature to work, the Excel file must be stored in OneDrive.

Create a sheet view

Along the bottom of your spreadsheet, click the tab for the sheet that you want to create a sheet view for.

Then at the top of the spreadsheet, click the View tab, and on the toolbar, select Sheet View > New. You’ll be switched to a new sheet view of this sheet.

Creating a new sheet view. Here you can filter or sort the data without affecting the original data set.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Apply whatever filters and sorting you like to the data on this sheet — your actions won’t affect the original version of the sheet.

When you’re finished making your customizations, save the new sheet view and give it a unique name: On the View tab, click Temporary View (this is the name given to a new sheet view by default). You’ll be prompted to type in a new name for your new sheet view. Then click the Keep button.

When you click Exit on this toolbar, the sheet view is dismissed, and the spreadsheet returns to its original, default state.

Switch among sheet views

Once you and any of your collaborators have created sheet views for the spreadsheet, you can easily switch from one to another. At the top of the spreadsheet, click the View tab. Then at the left of the toolbar, select the name of the current view (it says Default if you’re viewing the spreadsheet without a sheet view applied) to open a dropdown listing the names of sheet views that have been created for the spreadsheet. Click the name of one of these sheet views to switch to it.

Click the dropdown on the toolbar to switch to a different sheet view.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Manage your sheet views

You can delete, duplicate, or rename your sheet views. At the top of your spreadsheet, click the View tab. Then toward the left of the toolbar, click Options.

On the “Sheet Views options” panel, click to select the name of a sheet view. Then click the Rename, Duplicate, or Delete button to perform that action on the selected sheet view.

Excel: Place images in cells with the IMAGE function

This feature requires Excel 2024.

Using the IMAGE function, you can insert and display web-based images in your spreadsheets to create visually engaging dashboards, inventories, and so on. Instead of floating on top of a cell, images inserted with the IMAGE function live within a cell and will remain there when you sort, filter, calculate, or otherwise manipulate a table.

The formula for the IMAGE function that you enter into a cell is:

=IMAGE(source, [alt_text], [sizing], [height], [width])

source: Insert the web link to an image here, whether it’s on the internet or stored in your OneDrive. You can also reference another cell that contains an image or web link. BMP, JPG/JPEG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, ICO, and WEBP image formats are supported.

alt_text: Optionally, you can type in text that names or very briefly describes the image. This is useful if the image cannot be displayed, such as if the link becomes inactive.

sizing: This is also optional and determines how the image will be sized inside the cell. You can enter one of the following numbers:

0: This is the default. The image will be sized to fit inside the size of the cell, while maintaining the image’s original aspect ratio.

1: The image’s length and width will be stretched to fill the cell, which may distort its original aspect ratio.

2: The image’s width will be stretched to fill the cell’s width, but not its height, thus maintaining the image’s original aspect ratio.

3: The image’s height will be stretched to fill the cell’s height, but not its width, thus maintaining the image’s original aspect ratio.

height: This optional value specifies the height of the image in pixels.

width: This optional value specifies the width of the image in pixels.

Here’s an example that uses all the optional settings above:

=IMAGE(“https://cdn.subscribers.com/uploads/setting/modal_image/44546/CW-favicon-600px__1_.png”, “Computerworld Favicon”, 3, 200, 300)

The image file at the web link will display “Computerworld Favicon” if this link doesn’t work. It will be sized to fill the cell’s height (“3”), but not its width. However, the image will be restricted to a height and width of 200 x 300 pixels. (Normally you’d use either the sizing or the height and width controls, not all of them.)

In this example, the square CW favicon has been distorted to a height of 200 pixels and a width of 300 pixels.
Howard Wen / Foundry

For more about working with the IMAGE function, see Microsoft’s IMAGE function support page.

PowerPoint: Create internal hyperlinks in a presentation

You can now create hyperlinks within a presentation: When you click linked text or a linked image on a slide, you will jump to another slide in the same presentation.

Go to the slide that contains the object (text or image) that you want to link from. Right-click on this object, and on the menu that opens, select Hyperlink…. Alternatively, you can click on the object to select it. Then, above the slide, click the Insert tab, and on the ribbon toolbar, click Link.

Either action will open the Insert Hyperlink panel. In the left column of this panel, click Place in This Document. In the second column, select the slide that you want the new hyperlink to jump to when it’s clicked. Then click OK.

Adding an internal hyperlink to a presentation.
Howard Wen / Foundry

To test the hyperlink, go to the slide that contains the hyperlinked object. Above the slide, click the Slide Show tab. On the ribbon toolbar, click From Current Slide. Now click the object that you created a hyperlink for — this action should jump to the slide that you selected.

PowerPoint: Create a video recording of a presentation

A presentation is about more than the slide deck. Equally important are the things you say that aren’t written on the slides — and how you say them. That means colleagues who aren’t able to attend a live session may miss out on the full impact of your presentation.

In PowerPoint 2021 and 2024, you can record both audio and video of a presentation and export it as a video to share with others.

Above your presentation, click the Record tab. On the ribbon toolbar, click From Beginning or From Current Slide. This will open a recording studio panel over the screen.

PowerPoint’s recording tools appear at the top of the screen.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Along the top of this panel, you can click the webcam or microphone icons to turn these devices on or off for recording. If you have more than one camera and/or mic connected to your computer, you can switch among them by clicking the three-dot icon on this toolbar.

Before you start the recording, take a moment to review the slides in your presentation — at the lower-left corner, click the left and right arrows to scroll through them. In the area above the slide thumbnail, you can optionally type in notes or a script to read during your recording.

Click the red circle button at the top to start recording. It will turn into a red square, indicating that your actions are now being recorded. Click through the slides and speak aloud, highlighting key points on the slides and providing more context for those who will be watching this video.

You can click the laser pointer, pen, or highlighter icons on the toolbar below the large thumbnail of the slide to point out, draw on, or highlight things on the slide. These gestures will be included in the recording.

At the top of the screen, click the Pause button (to the left of the webcam icon) to pause recording. Click it again to resume.

Click the red square at the top of the screen to stop recording. On the large thumbnail of the slide, click the triangle icon to play back the recording. If you want to redo the recording, click the circular arrow icon at the top of the screen.

When you’re satisfied with the recording, click Export at the top of the screen. On the page that opens, you can type in a file name for the recording and optionally click Browse to select where on your PC you want to save the video file. Then click the Export Video button to save the recording to that location.

Exporting a video of a presentation.
Howard Wen / Foundry

Depending on its length, the video may take a few minutes to export.

PowerPoint: Insert live webcam video into your presentation

This feature requires PowerPoint 2024.

With PowerPoint’s Cameo feature, you can embed live video from your webcam into one or more slides in your presentation. This can be useful when you’re collaborating with your co-workers on a PowerPoint presentation so you can talk with them directly. Or when you’re presenting a slideshow to others, you might want to insert your live webcam feed into a specific slide to explain the information on it.

Go to the slide where you want to add live video. Above the slide, click the Insert tab. On the ribbon toolbar, click Cameo to insert your webcam feed. Select This Slide or All Slides. A large headshot icon will appear on the lower right of the slide. (If you selected All Slides, this icon will appear on all the other slides in the presentation.) Click the crossed-out camera icon on it to switch on a live feed of your webcam.

Your live webcam feed appears at the lower right of the slide.
Howard Wen / Foundry

You can reposition your webcam feed on the slide by clicking-and-holding onto it and dragging it to another area on the slide. You can resize it by dragging one of the nine points bordering it inward or outward.

There are also several ways that you can customize your webcam feed, such as applying styles and visual effects. These options are listed on the ribbon toolbar in the “Camera Styles” area.

When you’re satisfied with the way you appear on the webcam feed, click the Slide Show tab above the slide. On the ribbon toolbar, select to start the presentation From Beginning or From Current Slide (the slide that’s open in the main area of PowerPoint).

As you advance through the presentation, your webcam feed will appear on the slide that you set it on. When the presentation is finished and you exit out of Slide Show mode, the webcam feed will turn off. You can also turn it off by simply clicking on the live feed image.

PowerPoint: Add captions to video or audio on a slide

This feature requires PowerPoint 2024.

If a video or audio file embedded on a slide has a closed captioning file that accompanies it, you can add this caption file so that the captions appear when the media is played. This can be helpful for viewers who are hard of hearing or who aren’t native speakers of your language.

Adding a closed captioning file makes video playback more accessible.
Howard Wen / Foundry

(If a video or audio file isn’t already on a slide, click the Insert tab at the top of the screen. On the ribbon toolbar, click Video or Audio. The interface will prompt you to select a video or audio file on your PC.)

Right-click on the embedded video or audio file, and on the menu that opens, select Insert Captions. Alternatively, click on the video or audio file to select it. Above the slide, click the Playback tab. On the ribbon toolbar, click Insert Captions and select Insert Captions again on the menu that opens.

Either way, the interface will prompt you to upload the caption file (in WebVTT or SRT format) that goes with the embedded video or audio file. Once the captions are uploaded, you can click the Play button below the video or audio clip to see the captions.

Outlook: Find emails quickly with Instant Search

Outlook 2021 and 2024 offer much more powerful search features than their predecessors. Inside the search box at the top of the screen, type keywords related to an email you’re looking for, such as the name of the sender or recipient, a subject line, or words or phrases that may be in the email. As you type, the Instant Search feature will generate results, if any, in a dropdown below the search bar.

You can click the Files or People tabs to narrow the search to emails with a file attachment or a sender described by your keywords. To the left of the search box, clicking All folders will open a dropdown where you can select a specific folder to narrow the results to emails in that folder only.

To search for emails, simply start typing in the search box at the top of the screen.
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In the dropdown, click on the email that you want to open. Or you can press the Enter key on your keyboard, and the full list of search results will appear below in the main window of the Outlook app.

When you hit Enter, the full list of results appears below.
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Refine the search results using filters

On the toolbar just above the results, you can click options such as Has attachments, Unread, @ Mentions me, and so on to filter the results by those criteria.

Another way to filter results: Back inside the search box at the top, click the Filters icon (three horizontal lines that vaguely resemble a funnel) to the right to open a panel listing various filtering options.