How to Get Free Microsoft Office for Students

 

Well school is just around the corner and students need the right technology in order to survive in our connected world. Nevertheless, have you seen the prices? However, I am going to show you how to save money and get free or discounted Microsoft Office 365 for students.

You can buy a subscription for Microsoft Office 365 for $99 to $69 a year depending on the features you need. Although this may be true, remember that particular price is for a year. Otherwise, there is Office Home & Student 2019, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for $149.

Yes, you can get perfectly fine open source software like Libre Office that does everything, for the most part, that Microsoft Office does, and Libre Office is free. Can’t beat free, right? On the other hand, you want your kids to get Microsoft Office because that’s what they are going to see in the workplace once they graduate. Therefore, you may think it makes more sense for them to start using this software in school to know how to use it later.

Now they can use Microsoft Office online for free. You can do that too. All you need is to set up an account. Do you have an outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com email account already? All they need to do is simple. They log into their account and select the part that looks like nine squares in the upper left right next Outlook and the apps icons will pop out. Just click on the one you want and viola you have free office apps. Or you just use your same Microsoft login for your email and go to Office.com and sign in. You get the same thing. You can download the files or email just like you can if had a version of Office installed on the computer too.

 

But what if I told you can have your cake and eat it too? After all, you really prefer having Microsoft Office installed on your computer. At the same time, it would be great to find a deep discount to help lower that software price when you think of all those expenses you’re dishing out for your student going back to school. The good news is Microsoft has something called deals giving students free copies of Office 365.

Now you would have to enter the student’s school email address and Microsoft checks to see if they’re eligible. And something similar is available for people who work for a company who satisfies the Home Use Program eligibility requirements. Now with this you only get a 30% discount.

For the truly frugal, there is another way to use free Microsoft Office 365 for students worth exploring. If you can’t get the student freebie and your employer’s not a part of the Home Use Program and want a free office suite and still access to Microsoft Office, sometimes, I’d download my pick for the open source office suite Libre Office. Work on you documents there when you can’t connect and log into Outlook.com or Office.com and use the real deal.

In the end if you have an internet connection anyway and don’t want to clutter the hard drive then just use the online version. Don’t we live online these days anyway?