In today’s article we explain how to get hold of office 365 (note, it will soon be called Microsoft 365) for free and completely legal. We know that OpenOffice or LibreOffice exists, like many people who also still want to use Microsoft suiteso it never hurts to learn how to save a few —hundreds of— euros without having to change programs.
Obviously, as we have seen with free VPNs, the products end up being paid for in one way or another, but in the case of Office, yes. there are relatively “clean” options to access their programs without having to give away our digital soul or our personal data, wow. Let’s see them, we have gathered six.
Methods to have Microsoft 365 free
Use Microsoft Office online
We start with the online version of Office, which is free. It’s not exactly the same as Microsoft 365 (it’s missing some options) but you just have to go to Office.com and sign in with your Microsoft account to be able to start using:
- Word
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- OneNote
- sway
- People
- Calendar
- OneDrive
For example, citations cannot be made in word, WordArt, references, or comments, as well as apply layouts and styles. In Excel you will lack the most advanced formulas, so like the macros, and in PowerPoint the available animations will be simpler. Now, they will serve you excellently for most common office tasks.
Install the Office applications for your mobile
In you Android or iOS you can also find a Microsoft Office application that comprises the classic trio of Word, Excel and PowerPointand although editing text or Excel tables may seem a bit awkward on your smartphone, as long as you have a bigger screen you will see that the thing becomes more reasonable.
Be careful, apart from being able to use quite complete versions of the applications, you will also have at hand Office Leons to scan documents, a scanning tool pdf conversionthe ability to share documents with nearby devices, and the ability to extract images and data from documents and tables.
Subscribe to the trial version
This is one of the easiest ways to access full versions of the entire Office suite, but you’ll only be able to use it for one month. After that period you will have to remove the wallet or switch to the other methods. Oh, you have to be careful: to subscribe you have to enter a payment method, and if you don’t cancel your subscription in time you could be charged when that month ends.
This free version is already installed locally, so you can benefit from the advantages of editing outside the cloud. In addition, you can share the test with up to 5 people, and with it 1 TB of OneDrive storage and the possibility of synchronizing files between Windows, Apple and Android.
Ask your university or company
For now we have only talked about limited versions, either in terms of features or in terms of time, but now we enter the most complete free alternatives. Microsoft has some agreements with educational centers so that their students have free (or very cheap) access to their office suite.
In other words, if you are a student, you may be interested in this option, so ask the secretary just in case. Along these same lines, it is possible that in your own company there is a corporate version at hand for all employees —except if you are a journalist, of course, in which case you will surely not even be hired. Ask the computer technicians, who will help you access these programs.
Join a friend’s family account
Microsoft 365 has an option for families that allows access to the service to a maximum of 6 people. If, for whatever reason, you have a tremendously generous friend who already has an account and “overbooks” him, ask him. Maybe you can agree on an account swap. You lend him the Netflix one (not for long) and he or she passes you yours from office.
Buy devices with Office installed
Obviously, we put this alternative last because we imagine that you are here because you already have a pcbut for you to keep in mind in the future, if you are looking for a new team and preconfiguredit is possible that apart from having Windows installed, they have added a subscription to Microsoft 365 between 3 and 12 months. As you can imagine, if you build the computer yourself, forget about this kind of offer.
Images | Microsoft and Windows on Unsplash
