Schools
Students
Get Office free from your school
Office 365 Education for Students is available for free to students who are enrolled at qualifying schools. Install Office on up to 5 PCs or Macs and on other mobile devices, including Windows tablets and iPad.
Teachers
Office 365 Free for Students
In September 2014, Microsoft announced that students age 13 and older located in the U.S. can skip the IT department and sign up for Office 365 for Students. Previously, it was on the school to initiate the service, create an account for the student, and then order the Office 365 license for that account.
The new self-serve model allows students to go to Office 365 for Students and enter a valid school-provided email address. Qualified students are then given the following for free:
- The latest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access and Publisher
- Installation on up to five PCs or Macs, and Office apps on other mobile devices, including Windows tablets and iPad
- 1 Terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage
- Office Online
Microsoft rolled this out to U.S. students on Sept. 22, but will expand the self-serve model worldwide later in 2014. Starting on Dec. 1, faculty and staff will also have access to Office 365 ProPlus for free, so teachers will be using the same versions of Office with the same features as students. Teachers in the U.S. can sign up starting in October.
The biggest disclaimer for all of this is that schools must have “purchased Office organization-wide for all faculty/staff via the Microsoft Volume Licensing program.” There is no mention of how long the free subscription to Office 365 for Students is valid. Licensing programs come in subscription or perpetual flavors. It seems logical that Microsoft would require students to re-validate their .edu email address every year or so. Otherwise, students would have Office for free for life, and there’s no way Microsoft would do that.
