Office 2021 Retail not showing any New Features

John 1

I have bought Office 2021 Pro Plus 2021 Retail (not an LTSC version), my current build version is 2210 (15726.20202). The update channel is set to Current (Retail/RTM)

However, up to this day there is still no Visual Refresh nor is there any megaphone icon in the top right corner to enable this or any other upcoming features.

When manually adding the megaphone icon through the options in Word, the icon is grayed out.

Using Windows 11 Pro 22H2 build 22621.819.

How come I am not able to receive the Visual Refresh or use the megahpone icon at all?

2 answers

Ceasar Chen_MSFT 4,406 Reputation points

2022-11-15T06:24:59.99+00:00

Hi, @John
Visual refresh is rolling out in stages and is currently available to Beta Channel users running Version 2108 Build 14301.20004 or later on Windows 11 or Windows 10.

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John 1 Reputation point

2022-11-15T22:05:38.913+00:00

@Ceasar Chen_MSFT

I recall it being released to stable versions (Current channel) for a while now.

Also, I installed Office 2021 Pro Plus before and I got the Visual Refresh along with the megaphone icon automatically. After formatting my PC and installing Office again, none of these appear anymore. How is that possible?
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Ceasar Chen_MSFT 4,406 Reputation points

2022-11-16T07:10:11.9+00:00

After testing, I downloaded Office2021 Pro Plus and Word has this new feature. My word version is: 2210 Build 16.0.15726.20188. You can try rolling back the version of Office to fix the problem.

John 1 Reputation point

2022-11-17T09:53:22.673+00:00

Thanks for testing. If I may ask, how did you install Office 2021 Pro Plus? Is it with the deployment tool?

Ceasar Chen_MSFT 4,406 Reputation points

2022-11-18T01:38:31.657+00:00

I deployed Office 2021 Plus using ODT.

John 1 Reputation point

2022-11-18T08:44:12.407+00:00

Could you please show the config file you used for the ODT?

Ceasar Chen_MSFT 4,406 Reputation points

2022-11-18T09:31:34.967+00:00

<Configuration>
<Add OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="Current" AllowCdnFallback="true">
<Product ID="ProPlus2021Retail">
<Language ID="zh-cn" />
<Language ID="en-us" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
</Product>
</Add>
</Configuration>

John 1 Reputation point

2022-11-18T15:48:57.363+00:00

Thank you very much

Ceasar Chen_MSFT 4,406 Reputation points

2022-11-29T02:45:51.977+00:00

So, is your problem solved now?

John 1 Reputation point

2022-11-29T12:59:15.443+00:00

I searched for "new visual" in the search bar of Word and the right side introduction appeared, but there was no button to enable it. After closing Word and opening it up again, the visual refresh magically got applied. Perhaps searching for it was the trigger.

The other new features still aren't there though

Ceasar Chen_MSFT 4,406 Reputation points

2022-11-30T02:05:42.263+00:00

What are the other new features? This link has all the new features of Office 2021 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-new-in-office-2021-43848c29-665d-4b1b-bc12-acd2bfb3910a. What new features are you missing?

John 1 Reputation point

2022-11-30T14:44:29.223+00:00

Indeed all the mentioned features in your link (such as co-authoring, sheet views, accessibility ribbon) aren't there except for the Visual Refresh.
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Office 2021 Retail not showing any New Features

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