Microsoft has introduced a new program that will allow eligible students and teaches to get Microsoft Office free. Last year Microsoft rolled out cloud based Office 365 Education for Students and Teachers under the name Student Advantage. Student Advantage allows Students, Faculty and Staff members to use Office 365 under Microsoft Volume Licensing policy for free.
Free Microsoft Office for Students
Microsoft Office Student Advantage is a great program, but has one drawback. The school has to create an account for a student, who wants to sign up for the program. It doesn’t allow students to sign up for themselves. The onus is on the school authorities to initiate the service, create an account and order the Office 365 license on behalf of the student.. This drawback is now taken care by Microsoft, user can sign up for Office 365 Student and Teacher Edition by themselves.
A user should must be 13 years or older to be eligible. They will have to check their eligibility by providing school provided email address in order to validate their credentials. A background check is performed by the Volume Licensing Server, once the provided email address matches user can go ahead and download Office 365 on their machine.
Features available:
- Can be installed on up to five PCs, Macs and Office apps on any mobile devices that includes Window Phone, Windows RT, Windows tablets, iPad etc.
- Office 365 Student Advantage comes with latest version of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Access and Publisher application.
- Offers 1 TB (Terabyte) of OneDrive Cloud storage space.
- Office 365 application works perfectly in Office Online mode.
Office 365 free edition for Students, Faculty or Staff member is available for those school who have purchased Office Organization-wide license. It is available in U.S. currently and will be expanded later on worldwide.
The changes that Microsoft has made to its previous Student Advantage version will bring in ease for school IT department as in the past user have to initiate the services, order the free licenses on behalf of their student which was a time consuming and lengthy process. This new self-service model removes all those unnecessary steps and hence simply allows eligible user to sign up for Office 365 themselves with the same level of control, security and flexibility on the app.
Microsoft is also providing free upgrade from Office 365 to Office 365 Pro Plus for faculty and Staff member to any Organization after 1st December 2014. Sign-up is available in the U.S. today, and will expand worldwide later this year.
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 iPads.
