Good news coming down the pipeline for students and teachers this week: Microsoft has announced that they will be offering a free Office 365 subscription to anyone, worldwide, with an eligible email address. This includes a 1TB OneDrive allotment and free download of Microsoft Office software on up to five PCs or Macs and five mobile devices (iOS, Android and Windows). Previously, this was offered in the United States but has since expanded to the rest of the world.
A personal subscription typically retails for $9.99/month or $99/year, so this has some nice savings potential. This is big news on the iOS side of things, previously a subscription was required to get the full benefits of the app, something that has been much discussed since its initial release.
To check your eligibility (or your child’s), head over to the student account page, likewise for teachers. After entering your school provided email address, you’ll receive a confirmation email with details on finalizing your subscription and download links to grab the software. The main requirement is for your educational institution to have previously purchased Microsoft Office, if you are a user at school then you’ll likely be eligible for this deal.
Not eligible for free Office 365? Qualifying tablets from Best Buy now include a Office 365 subscription or you can grab via this HP Stream deal from Microsoft. Dropbox users still have the opportunity to add quite a bit of OneDrive storage for free.
We’ve also rounded up the best student discounts on electronics, food, games and more.
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Students worldwide can now check eligibility for free Office from their school
Last week, at a public event held by the New York City Department of Education, New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito announced free Office for all of their 1.1M students plus teachers. The room—filled with students and teachers—erupted with cheers.
But New York is not alone.
Millions of students around the world are eligible for free Office from their school and today we are announcing that we’ve made it easy for all eligible students globally to sign up themselves to get Office 365 and install free Office.*
That includes the 5.5 million eligible students in Australia, the nearly 5 million eligible students in Germany, 7 million more in Brazil, 1.3 million at Anadolu University in Turkey, every student in Hong Kong and millions more.
This service was previously available only in the U.S., but beginning today it can be accessed by any eligible student or teacher where Office 365 is available. You’ll need a valid school email address to complete the sign up.
To check if you’re eligible for free Office from your school:
- Students—Go to office.com/getoffice365 and enter a school-provided email address.
- Teachers—Go to office.com/teachers and enter your school-provided email address.
Students getting Office at no additional cost to schools is a benefit Microsoft provides to education institutions that buy Office for faculty and staff. That means teachers can also sign up and enjoy all the benefits of Office connected to a cloud service, like using the OneNote Class Notebook.
Once signed up for Office 365 you get:
- The latest version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access and Publisher installed on up to five PCs or Macs and up to five mobile devices like iPad, Android and Windows tablets.
- 1TB of storage on OneDrive you can use to store and share all your documents across all your devices.
- Office Online for in-browser editing, collaboration and co-authoring
Feel free to cheer.
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