• expired

Free Office 365 for Students and Educators @ Microsoft

1720
This post contains affiliate links. OzBargain might earn commissions when you click through and make purchases. Please see this page for more information.

Here's an OzReminder for those new members who may not have seen it, I don't like to post too many reminders but this ones for the kids…

Students and educators at eligible institutions can sign up for Office 365 Education for free, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and now Microsoft Teams, plus additional classroom tools. Use your valid school email address to get started today.

Previous long expiry post

Related Stores

Microsoft
Microsoft

closed Comments

  • +1

    Can confirm Victorian public school students all get free Office 365. If your school tech can be bothered giving out the credentials for it or not is a different story. If you used Microsoft Teams for remote learning during the lockdowns that same email address and password is what you use to sign into office.com to get the office suite.

    • +1

      Correction - don't contact the school technician - contact the school Principal.

  • +2

    Does it comes with 1TB Onedrive storage?

    • +8

      Yes but the education department have access to your files on OneDrive

      • Would 256-bit encryption helps?

        • +1

          Of course, nothing wrong with running a block-level encryption service like rsync, as long as you stick within throttling limits

        • +14

          Not really. We access student files all the time - it's literally a shortcut built into our sharepoint environment.

          • -7

            @scphotos: I call bullshit @scphotos - you're obviously not a Specialist Technician.

            • +5

              @Minimum-Chips: No bullshit. I'm a Microsoft 365 admin and we access student's emails and onedrive all the time.

              • -7

                @Colombian: BUT
                DET Specialist Technicians are not Admins - hence my bullshit call…

                • +11

                  @Minimum-Chips: No, I'm not. I'm a teacher. It's functionality that's explicitly meant for teachers (retrieve student work if they are sick etc).

                  I click on the blue OneDrive link next to their name in our SharePoint page and see the contents of their OneDrive.

                  Lol.

                  I'd envisage there is either a setting on the tenant that enables this, or they run a script that reads student & teacher security groups and provisions the permissions accordingly.

                  So your bullshit call is wrong. Not everyone on the internet is lying :)

                    • +8

                      @Minimum-Chips: Catholic diocesan 150 schools on the tenant.

                      Your experience != Everyone's

                      Not sure why you're so worked up over this…

      • just run boxcryptor

  • +5

    I found my alumni email worked (UniMelb).

    • Nice

    • Thanks, signed up with my Melb Uni alumni account as well.

      • Thx. I graduated 26 years ago from unimelb and never bothered with alumni.
        Now I'm interested.

      • i have tried for years to get one of those and it never works…

    • My alumni has always had office installs available, 5 installs, since I graduates 10 years ago. Is this offe somehow different ?

    • What gets sent to your Uni email address; is it a link to install the O365 software?

      Could that link potentially be forwarded on to another person, for example?

      • +1

        You’ll need your credentials to download and install, so forwarding the email won’t help.

    • +2

      Tried with my alumni email, no good (UNSW)

      • Unsw alumni email is not ending with edu.au

        • Yes it does, my alumni email is [email protected] UNSW just manages their Office 365 differently with all UNSW emails having access to it except Alumni emails.

          • @h0mbre: lucky for you… you got to keep your student###…

            mine with ending @unswalumni.com

    • +3

      so jealous that UniMelb has such support for alumni, Monash sucks tons of money and do nothing about it

      • +1

        At Deakin as soon as you graduate they delete your data from their servers and your email address. I signed up as an alumni and can login to a portal with my regular gmail but they don't give me a Deakin email. Talk about crap :( I want my uni web hosting again so I can do cool projects on a school website.

        • Use Oracle free tier :)

  • Has anyone got it working recently for NSW ?

    • +1

      woks for usyd

      • +12

        Woks for USYD

        What a noble cause.

    • +1

      It works for the standard issued NSW DET email given to kids in primary and high school

      • I tried with a primary school email and got this error - "We can’t connect to the server at fs.det.nsw.edu.au"

  • Doesn't work for Griffith alumni.

  • +1

    Signed up with my UTS alum account. Finally some ROI haha.

    • +2

      I have same account but don't remember what the password was. Who to contact?

      nevermind, rang IT support@uts and all sorted.

    • When did you study last in UTS? I did mine in 2003. Is it too far to try my luck?

      • Mine was 2011. Once an alumni always an alumni… try registering for your alumni account first then this.

  • Is there any way to get free word/office on a Mac?

  • +2

    This is entrapment by Microsoft. I found this out the other day when looking for an office license and my daughter said "But you don't need to pay for that. It is free Dad." I can picture IT staff choking on their coffee as they prepare for yet another Microsoft license audit.

    • Not sure if you're trolling or not…
      By 'looking for an office license', do you mean try to pirate the software?
      If so, that is illegal.
      If logging in with your Education credentials and downloading software and accessing services, that is all legit if your Education provider has the licenses.

      • Looking to purchase an office license.

      • By 'looking for an office license', do you mean try to pirate the software?
        If so, that is illegal.

        Wah.

    • Given the tools at the disposal of your average IT admin, auditing Microsoft licenses isn't particularly hard. The additional installs are also part of the license agreement and is all done per-user not per-device, so IT staff couldn't care less until it compromises security or some dumb dad tries to throw their kids license on 20 different devices.

      • +1

        The license automatically logs you out of other devices when you're > 5 devices.

        The days of microsoft audit licensing are gone.

        • +1

          audit is for perpetual licence. Microsoft shift to subscription model for majority of their products as this is way more profitable.

  • +2

    If you can sign into the O365 site you can then download the installer for Mac OS (at least that's the case at my organisation).

    • +1

      Anyone working for a company where users have an O365 license should be able to download and install Office for Windows/Mac. Just bear in mind that if you start registering random office installs with your work email address and password people using those devices will likely have full access to your work documents and resources.

      • At some point they changed it and made Word/Excel/Powerpoint force sign into your OneDrive so if you activate Office on a family members computer suddenly they are looking at your OneDrive files. In the past you had to sign into that separately.

  • A person wanted a fish from me so I taught them to fish (Technically an educator). Do I qualify?

    • +5

      depends if you have an "edu" email 'technically'.

  • No need to sign up
    Your IT department has turned off signup for Office 365 Education, but it looks like you already have access to some of the apps that come with Office 365 Education.
    We'll send you to the page where you can access them now.

    For VU. The apps are Outlook and 2 more, no Excel/Word/Powerpoint.

    Also:

    You currently have not been assigned an Office license that includes the Office desktop apps. Contact your admin for more information about how to get Office for your organization.

    sadface

  • +4

    The number of people I used to see buying Office365 when I was in school was surprising. No one seemed to know they could get it for free.

    • -2

      Sometimes it's much easier and cost effective to just pay to solve a problem than spending time, energy to study on it

      • Username does not check out :(

  • How do you get 1TB storage?

    • It's OneDrive. But the issue is that the account is linked to your education account, so if you're no longer enrolled there, then your access would be revoked. Probably better to use your own if you're planning on using it long term.

      • As others have said in here some alumni are receiving the Office 365 suite free.

        • Only if you get to keep the email address.

  • TAFE students ok?

    Definitely thanks OP as wouldn't have known this if you didn't send out a reminder umm can one search "long running" would other deals like this pop up?

    • +1

      Be warned, TAFE cuts off your email access the moment your course finishes.

  • Ok so how can i get an edu email… shortest free course possible?

  • +2

    Your IT department has turned off signup for Office 365 Education.

    • Same for me - UTAS

      • The full message is:

        No need to sign up

        Your IT department has turned off signup for Office 365 Education, but it looks like you already have access to some of the apps that come with Office 365 Education.
        We'll send you to the page where you can access them now.

        I suppose that's because our UTas accounts already have access to all the apps. Just annoying that it means we probably won't be able to take advantage of this as an alumni.

        • Alumni access would be ace!

  • +1

    Microsoft 365 is always free for education institution worldwide. I had setup for whole school or colleges back to 5 years ago.

    • Incorrect.
      Each institution pays a fee to Microsoft for each user licence.
      Please.
      Stop spreading bullshit if you don't know what you are talking about.

      • +4

        Well, they are kind of correct. Microsoft does provide A1 licenses for free (onedrive/teams/etc + office web apps only), but the vast majority of schools would be on A3 (onedrive/teams + office desktop) which cost.

        My org has A5 for staff, not sure about what they have for students.

        IIRC they said it costs hundreds of thousands a year for the org (including azure ad etc)

      • nah, people using .edu domain, to trick microsoft to provide free office 365 service to .edu domain. there are ways to get that domain without actually being an educational institution. not every school pays.

  • +1

    Can anyone explain how this is different then the staff or students get o365 from school? As soon as your email id is disabled you loose the access so what is the point of deal?

    • +2

      What's to explain? While you're a student you have access to this at home instead of having to purchase your own license, the same goes for a lot of workplaces. Plenty of people aren't aware of this, I've told people in places I've worked for years and they're all surprised they can install Office on their personal devices by just signing into Office.com with their work email address and password.

      This is a student deal, so obviously once you're not a student it's no longer a deal. If you need to separate home/work data then plenty of big organizations have access to the Home Use Program, which gives you a discount on Office.

    • +2

      Probably because it's not a real education and can't be proven by Microsoft.

    • -1

      I know everyone is hunting for a bargain but don’t skimp out on education. Public school should be affordable to anyone.

  • +1

    I am no longer able to use the installed Office on my PC with my UTAS details, only web based access. Is there a free/cheap way to get offline access?

  • Also free on the web browser.

    • +1

      Don’t need to be a student/educator for that. Anyone can use Word & Excel free in browser.

Login or Join to leave a comment