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 forindividuals, and $100 for theFamilyplan.
But what if you dont want to pay for Office at all?
What if you only use it sporadically, or cant afford a subscription?
All you need is to put in your schools official email address on theMicrosoft Office Educationpage to get started.
If your domain is verified, youll be granted access to Office tools using an automated authentication process.
There are some caveats here, and Microsoft isnt overly clear how everything works.
If your school is eligible, you should be good to go.
In other cases, your school might not be eligible for any of it.
First, go to theMicrosoft 365 website.
If you already have a Microsoft account, click theSign inbutton instead.
it’s possible for you to 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.
You only have access to the web app version of each app, but that isnt necessarily bad.
In fact, collaboration features are still available here.
Just see to it to cancel the subscription before youre charged.
All features for creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations are available online, with superior collaboration features.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is open-source, developed by the community, and completely free to use.
It supports a wide variety of Office formats.
LibreOffice has a customizable interface.
This is its biggest strengthand also a downside.
If you love tweaking apps and UI, you’ll enjoy setting up LibreOffice just the way you want.
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.
