Microsoft Project 2021 Pro Retail at a glance

Project Professional 2021 is the higher of the two desktop editions of Microsoft Project that were released in October 2021, at the same time as Office 2021 and Visio 2021. It is installed locally and handles the central discipline of classic project management: breaking work down into tasks, linking those tasks through dependencies, assigning people and costs, and letting the scheduling engine calculate the resulting dates. The retail package is the version of this edition sold to individual buyers and smaller organisations.

Within the Microsoft Project family, the Standard edition covers stand-alone planning, while the Professional edition adds dedicated resource tools and the ability to connect to Project Server or Project Online. Microsoft's cloud-based Project plans form a separate branch of the family and are sold as subscriptions. This edition is aimed at project managers who want the complete desktop scheduler, with the option of joining a central project system later if their organisation introduces one.

How it is used in everyday work

A typical planning session starts with a work breakdown structure. The planner enters phases and tasks in the grid, indents them into summary tasks, estimates durations and links the tasks with finish-to-start or other dependency types. Project then calculates start and finish dates automatically, so moving one delivery date shifts every dependent task with it. Once the plan has been approved, the planner saves a baseline, which records the original dates and costs for later comparison.

During execution, the software turns into a monitoring tool. Team leads enter percent complete or actual work, and the Tracking Gantt view places the planned bar and the current bar for each task one above the other, so any slippage becomes visible immediately. Construction coordinators, engineering and IT project managers, PMO staff and consultants who report schedule status to clients benefit most, because their projects combine many interdependent tasks with shared people whose availability changes from week to week.

The functions that make a practical difference

The Team Planner view is reserved for the Professional edition. It shows the assigned and unassigned work of each person on a single timeline, and tasks can be dragged from one team member to another to resolve overloads. Resource leveling complements it: when someone is booked beyond capacity, Project can delay or split tasks automatically, and the Leveling Gantt view shows which tasks moved and by how much. The option to mark tasks as inactive, also limited to the Professional edition, keeps an optional scope item in the file without affecting dates or costs, which helps when a client has not yet decided on an additional work package.

For communication with stakeholders, the Timeline view condenses a long schedule into a summary strip, and several timeline bars with their own date ranges can be displayed together. Built-in reports such as Burndown, Cost Overview, Resource Overview and Late Tasks turn schedule data into charts that can be copied into presentations. In organisations that run Project Server or Project Online, this edition can publish plans to the central system and submit timesheets, so managers and team members work from the same data.

Choosing the right edition

Microsoft offered two desktop editions of Project in the 2021 generation. Project Standard 2021 covers scheduling, cost planning, baselines, the Timeline view and the built-in reports, and it suits a single planner who manages projects without a central server. The Professional edition includes all of that and adds the Team Planner, inactive tasks, resource engagements and the connection to Project Server and Project Online. That makes it the better choice when the workloads of several people have to be balanced, or when plans must feed into a company-wide system. Teams that primarily need browser-based task collaboration rather than a desktop scheduler are better served by Microsoft's separate subscription plans.

Practical limits worth knowing before you buy

The collaboration functions of this edition depend on infrastructure that is not part of the purchase. Publishing to a central schedule, submitting timesheets and working with resource engagements require an existing Project Server installation or a Project Online environment; without one, the software works as a capable single-user scheduler. The desktop application is also different from Project for the web, whose capabilities Microsoft is moving into the new Planner. Some newer timeline options described in Microsoft's documentation, such as naming a timeline bar, are available only in the subscription desktop client. Colleagues who need to open your schedules also require Project themselves, because Office does not include it.

Common questions before ordering

Do I need Project Server or Project Online to use this edition?
No. Scheduling, resource leveling, the Team Planner, baselines and reports all work locally with ordinary project files. The server connection only becomes relevant when an organisation wants to manage several projects and shared resources centrally.

Can it open plans created in older versions of Microsoft Project?
Yes. Project 2021 uses the same .mpp file format as the 2013, 2016 and 2019 versions, so plans can be exchanged with colleagues on those releases without conversion. Files saved in much older formats can still be opened, although this may first have to be allowed in the Trust Center settings.

Can I bring existing task lists over from Excel?
Yes. The import wizard maps spreadsheet columns to Project fields such as task name, duration and start date. Schedule data can also be exported back to Excel for further analysis or for sharing with people who do not use Project.

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