The popular Office productivity suite is without a doubt one of the core products that Microsoft offers. Lately it has been trying to push Office more into the education and business sector. Microsoft’s Student Advantage initiative was first announced back in 2013 and its one of the ways the company seeks to increase Office adoption across schools. Today the company announced a fundamental change to Student Advantage thus making it much more easy for students to get the Office suite for free.
When this initiative was first launched last year there was a caveat. Schools were the ones who had to initiate the service, create and account and order an Office 365 license for the student. This meant that if the school’s IT department wasn’t able to do all this in time students had no way to take advantage of this offer.
Microsoft changes things today with a new self-serve model for students in the U.S. Any student aged 13 years or older can visit the Office 365 website to sign up for the service. They’ll need a valid school-provided email address just to sign up.
Students will then receive the latest versions of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Access, Outlook and Public. They’ll be able to install these apps on up to five Macs and PCs as well as mobile devices like tablets. 1 terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage and Office Online are both included as well.
Currently sign ups are only open for students in the U.S. but Microsoft commits to rolling out this chance for students across the world later this year.