Microsoft offers free Office 365 to students and teachers worldwide

A couple of weeks after Apple started to offer its iWork productivity web applications for free to everyone, Microsoft Corp. decided to propose an even better deal and provide its Office 365 suite free worldwide, but even to students and teachers.

Starting today, millions of students and teachers around the world are eligible for free Office 365 from their school. All eligible people will need to provide Microsoft a valid school email address to complete the sign up.

The Office 365 package that Microsoft provides to students and teachers includes 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 as well as Office Online for in-browser editing.

Microsoft’s Office productivity suite is one of the company’s major revenue drivers. To promote it and ensure that the current customers will keep using it in the long-term, Microsoft offers it to students free of charge, whereas teachers will use Microsoft Office (and Office file formats) to teach. After people get used to the software, they will eventually pay for it, which is good for the software giant.

To claim your free copy of Office 365, which usually costs starting from about £3.10/$4 a month, you will need to visit office.com/getoffice365 if you are a student, or office.com/teachers, if you are a teacher, and enter your school-provided email address.

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KitGuru Says: Microsoft’s idea to make Office 365 completely free for students and teachers is clearly an excellent one from many points of view. Not only the company will provide high-quality productivity apps to people who usually cannot pay for them, but it will also attract millions of new users to its ecosystem.

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