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5 Ways to Get Office 365 for Free

2 minute read

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Who doesn’t like free stuff? Office 365 isn’t usually free, unfortunately, though we certainly understand why. But luckily we found a variety of affordable plans for individuals and businesses, and even a few ways to try or use Office for free.

If any of these opportunities apply to you or pique your interest, go forth and install!

1. Office 365 for Business free trial

This trial version of Office 365 is really valuable for first-time admins or anyone who would like a peek into the business use of O365. First, you’ll sign up for a free trial of a business plan (at the time of this post, “Free trial” links appear at the bottom of the columns in the plan comparison table). Then, you can make use of Microsoft’s FastTrack service to add content and labs to your SharePoint site. At the end of your free trial, you can convert to a paid plan if you wish.

2. Office 365 Home free trial

If addition to the business plan trial, there’s the basic Home (or Personal) free trial version of Office 365. With these come full installed Office applications, so if you want to use your trial to explore Excel 2013 or see the features of OneNote 2013 that other versions lack, this is the trial for you.

3. Office 365 for students and teachers

Microsoft committed to getting Office 365 into the classroom, with students able to sign up for free individually and faculty/staff not far behind. Taking advantage of Office 365’s features is a huge opportunity for students, and having a free version leaves more spending money for pizza… or textbooks.

4. Office 365 for nonprofits

Qualified nonprofits get Office 365 for free (Business Essentials or E1 plans) or at a discount (Business Premium or E3 plans), according to the page linked above. Check out eligibility requirements here, along with a lot of other useful information.

5. Office Online

Last but not least, the online apps are always free! Gone are the days when you had to have an installed version of Word to open a .doc file. The web-based versions of Word, Outlook, OneNote, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneDrive are easy to use, automatically saved, open to sharing and collaboration, and always accessible. While it’s hard to beat the full-featured experience of the 2013 apps, you also can’t beat free, and that’s what you get with Office Online.

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