How to Get Microsoft Office for Free
Microsoft now bundles its Office products in the Microsoft 365 subscription. The Microsoft 365 Personal bundle comes with access to all Office programs, plus 1TB storage space in OneDrive. But it also costs $69.99 per year for individuals, and $100 for the Family plan. And now, Microsoft has a new plan called Microsoft 365 Basic, which provides access to all Office apps, plus 100GB OneDrive storage, for $1.99/month or $19.99/year, which is a step in the right direction.
But what if you don’t want to pay for Office at all? What if you only use it sporadically, or can’t afford a subscription? There are a couple of legit ways to access Microsoft Office apps like PowerPoint, Word, and Excel for free.
Microsoft 365 Education is free for students and teachers
If you’re a student or teacher, Microsoft will provide the entire suite to you for free, including Teams and classroom tools, as long as you are a part of an eligible institution. All you need is to enter your school’s official email address on the Microsoft Office Education page to get started. If your domain is verified, you’ll be granted access to Office tools using an automated authentication process. But if your institution still needs to be verified, it might take up to a month to complete the account setup.
There are some caveats here, and Microsoft isn’t overly clear how everything works. If your school is eligible, you should be good to go. However, it appears it’s possible you’ll only be eligible for the free Office web app, in addition to Microsoft Teams and OneDrive. In other cases, your school might not be eligible for any of it.
In those cases, Microsoft offers a discounted rate of $2.99 per month for all college students with a valid college email address. That subscription includes all Office products, along with 1TB OneDrive storage space, something you’d normally have to spend $6.99 per month for.
How to use Office apps online for free
If you’re not a student, you can still access Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Calendar, My Content, Skype, Designer and Clipchamp for free.
First, go to the Microsoft 365 website. Here, click the Sign up for the free version of Office button if this is the first time you're using a Microsoft product. If you already have a Microsoft account, click the Sign in button instead.
This will open up the Microsoft 365 online portal, with handy options for creating a new Word document, PowerPoint presentation, Excel workbook, and more. You can click any of the buttons to get started.
Then, choose the app you would like to work with, and it will open up instantly. All your work will be saved automatically in your OneDrive account.
While these Office apps are truly free, there is one catch: They aren’t the full-fledged desktop version that you’re used to. You only have access to the web app version of each app, but that isn’t necessarily bad. These web apps are solid, and sport the most important features for each app, so you’ll be able to get all of your regular work done in these apps. In fact, collaboration features are still available here. The downside, of course, is that they only work in the browser, so you’ll need an active internet connection.
If you need desktop Office apps, you can always get a one-month free trial of Microsoft 365 by entering your credit card details. Just make sure to cancel the subscription before you’re charged.
Alternatives to Microsoft Office
If you find the online version of Microsoft Office to be limiting, or just finicky, there are other free options out there.
Google Workspace
While Google Workspace is completely online, it can serve as a full-fledged replacement for Microsoft Office, for free. All features for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are available online, with superior collaboration features. What Google Workspace lacks in features, it can make up with its add-ons and APIs, where third-party developers offer up additional functionality on top of the basic features.
FreeOffice
If you miss the old days of Microsoft Office, the one where you bought a software, and it stayed the same for years at an end, working consistently, you might like FreeOffice. FreeOffice can open all your Microsoft Office files, for free, and the interface is quite closely aligned with Microsoft Office apps. It's not going to be as feature-rich as Microsoft 365, but if you want a straightforward and compatible suite of apps for personal and work use, FreeOffice might be it.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is open-source, developed by the community, and completely free to use. It supports a wide variety of Office formats. Because it's open-source, it has an active community that keeps updating the app, making sure it runs smoothly as new versions of Windows and macOS ship.
LibreOffice has a customizable interface. This is its biggest strength—and also a downside. If you love tweaking apps and UI, you'll enjoy setting up LibreOffice just the way you want. But if you're the kind of person that likes a plug-and-play kind of experience, the interface itself might be an annoyance. In that case, we would suggest you use FreeOffice, or the next option on the list.
Apache OpenOffice
Think of OpenOffice as a more mature cousin of LibreOffice. It too is open-source, and has a long-standing reputation in the industry. But it has a much slower development cycle, with fewer add-on features. OpenOffice gets the basics right, and sticks to it. If you want a more traditional office suite experience, with the knowledge that's supported by an open-source community, Apache OpenOffice is a good choice for you.